A kind of follow on to Dee's line per scene summary post. I've been having a rethink of the plot of Terrestrial (novel) and am trying to make a map of all the characters' actions, their motives for these actions and the resposes of other characters. I'm hoping ultimately to have a clear diagram of how all the motives integrate in the book.
Questions
Can anyone who's done this before offer any tips?
Do you think this is a sane course of action?
Sharon

A friend of mine swears by the use of cork boards. I guess this might have the advantage of meaning that you don't lose the use of your lounge floor for the duration of the novel-plannning campaign Good luck with your plotting.

Mazzy

Hi Sharon, I'm restructuring CoD and to do that wrote a list of bullet points of the events of the book. This cuts out purely linking narrative, which would have to change anyway if the events are presented in a different order.

It sound like you're going several steps beyond me with your plan. Could there be a danger that you spend so much energy on this dissection that you'll be too knackered, and possibly too bored, to put the thing back together again?

In any case, good luck!

Adele.

Thanks Mazzy, I hadn't thought of doing something where you could have lots of separate bits and move them around; at the moment, I'm just drawing it out on sheets of A4 and joining thm together. Might try that.

Hi Adele, how's CoD going? I'm not bored yet! It seems to be generating ideas, but it is very scary picking it apart when I had previously decided the plot would do; Claudia, for example is probably out the window entirely. I've always had doubts about some plot points, and it seems to be because although I know why KM does what he does, I'm too vague about the motivations of some other characters.

Sharon

Hi Sharon, CoD has gone from a simple linear narrative to flashback central - I just hope it makes sense! Pity about old Claudia; another darling murdered

Adele.

Never bloody liked her much in the first place!

Sharon, hi. It’s good to see you back on the forums.

Plot threads running throughout a novel are not easy for other members to help with. In the normal way of reading a novel we go at our own pace and if we find we’ve lost a thread we can flip back to re-check. Reading a novel uploaded chapter by chapter makes this difficult.

Specifically, while I didn’t warm to Claudia, I thought she and her twin made a useful counterpoint to Kern. Without them, it would appear that Kern is the only surviving Gem… or have I forgotten something?

What you’re planning sounds like a damned good idea. And I like Mazzy’s suggestion of the corkboard. You could have colour-coded strings running between the characters’ storylines to make sure they cross at the right times.

Good luck and keep us posted.

Dee

Thanks Dee
I'm thinking of expanding a couple that I'd mentioned in passing ~ Cendrillon, whose situation seems more interesting than Claudia's and the Whittings, who you may not remember. I felt that concentrating on Claudia and Peter meant there wasn't enough variety of GEMS. I might need to create some more. I might put Claudia back in in a smaller role, but decided to cut all the suicide stuff; it felt like too much of a hiccup and then the plot goes quiet afterwards and it feels like an anti-climax. But I kind of liked Peter.

I feel as if I've made a lot of progress today, though, just drawing circles, squares and arrows on lots of sheets of paper.

Sharon

Apparently, whilst writing 'Slaughterhouse 5' Kurt Vonnegaut (sp?) drew a huge flow diagram on the back of a piece of wallpaper to show where characters entered then left the plot of his story. Each character being shown by a different coloured pen.

Not sure how this information can help, but just to let you know that the 'diagram' has be succesfully employed.

Darryl

Thanks Darryl. I keep hearing Slaughterhouse 5 mentioned; I really must read it. Wallpaper sounds good. Down to BandQ I think. Sharon

Slaughterhouse 5 is magnificent. Sorry, I know that wasn't really pertinent, but I do like the idea of different coloured lines for each character.

Ani

This stuff sounds interesting. I currently have a plot plan/synopsis and then a list of characters with brief notes on their motives and characteristics. I like the idea of having something that's more 'at a glance' and easy to change - but I'm such a control freak I'd probably get carried away if I thought about this kind of stuff too much!

Cath

Ani, I'll definitely have to read it then.

Cath, I often end up drawing map type things when I can't figure out what's going on, but usually it's more about themes. It does seem to work for me to be able to physically see connections. Sharon

Has anyone used any of the software that's out there specifically for this sort of thing? For example:

http://www.writersstore.com/products.php?categories_id=164

Take your pick of that little lot! It's all pretty expensive and I guess for most of us that's going to be an issue.

What sort of things do you want to be able to do? Is it simply (!) a question of keeping track of characters and their position in a plot? Some VBA in Word could probably sort that out.

Jon

Jon, what’s VBA in Word?

I have problems with timelines. Because I tend to write scenes as I think of them and, more often than not, out of sequence, I sometimes get the continuity wrong. When I was writing the scenes in The Winter House between the solstice and twelfth night, I used an excel spreadsheet to make sure everything happened on the right days. It worked very well. I like the idea of wallpaper, but I don’t have enough wall-space!

Dee