As many of you know, nanowrimo is almost upon us. I'm all signed up, got a writing buddy (my daughter, who "won" last year). Been working out by drawing up characters, world-building and... attempting to come up with a plot.
Truth is, I can write a scene and I can create very realistic characters, but I just cannot come up with good plots.
So tell me, Gather Folk, do you have any tips for me? Any books that you recommend? Any experience that taught you something you'd be willing to share?
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Comments: 21
Fear is the projection of past trauma into the imagined future.
That gives me, as an author, a way to make my characters' past MUCH more functional. By working on creating the dilemma (and thereby helping the reader to experience the character's increasing unease), when I bring out the cause of the fear I can make the scene much more affecting.
Possibly I knew this -- I'm not a fan of the sort of French-maid exposition that some authors dump on you right at the beginning. But formulating it this way seems to make it clearer to me...
Thanks, Lynn.
Very interesting discussion, however. I learned some things, and maybe I will just use the time to work on character development.
Messy, but it might work for me...
But I've heard that if you know your character inside out and they are REAL to you that the plot will come from them and it'll take care of itself. I suspect that's often how mine come to me - through them.
Chris Baty, the creator of NaNoWriMo has a book out called No Plot, No Problem. He's a pantzer, as they say. No plot and just goes along blindly discovering the plot along the way.