Ais’s answer to “Hey lady! Just checking in to inquire about how that fantasy novel is going! How far are you along?…” > Likes and Comments
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Oh man, I'm with you on Scrivener. It's wayyyy too fun adding all this random info because it's so easy to organize or add a doc here or there and keep track of it.
I can't remember, did I mention this before? If so, ignore me! If not, maybe it's helpful?
I had that backstory issue a lot in the past, plus I kept forgetting really simple details about characters in other long stories, like sometimes even how old they were exactly or what their exact shade of skin was describe as being and etc. (Like, I'd know they were generally whatever complexion, but how did I describe them vs someone else with a similar complexion?) Or even hairstyle or whatever. Not even getting into needing to remember motivations or family member names or this or that.
Anyway, what I did was I created a pretty thorough character bio summary with a bunch of questions about the character, some really simple like age/height/weight/gender/pronouns/etc, others more complex like what would build them up as a person and what would break them down. I create one of these bio questionnaires for each of my main characters now, in this fantasy story, and I fill it all out right away with a number of characters, and others I fill in as I go and more information comes to me.
I made it available for download in case it's helpful for anyone else. You can find it here: http://aisylum.com/give-and-take/reso...
That is made for a fantasy story but you could easily change things around to fit whatever you need. But I keep that in my template section of Scrivener and copy/paste it into a new doc in scrivener and go to town. That template has been invaluable to me in being able to put backstory info while also more easily connecting information between characters.
Some characters have like, 10,000+ words written in their "summary of past" section, detailing basically a whole fic right there about events in their life, while others I was able to keep to a more modest 1000 words or so overviewing their info.
I was going to check if I gave you this link already, but then it occurred to me that even if I did, maybe someone else will see this and it will help them.
Anyway, don't get down on yourself, either! That backstory will probably be invaluable once you really get going on the story. And, who knows, maybe at some point you may even decide to restructure your view of the story so that the backstory becomes part of the story itself. And if so, that means you wrote a bunch of chapters already in advance :)
We should start biweekly check-ins or something lol "Did you get any writing done?" "How many words did you write?" "Did you finally write the chapter summary or are you still going at it a bit randomly?"
Also, don't discount the helpfulness of popping all around the story. If you're really into a future scene, if your story doesn't matter if you write it chronologically or not, then I say go for it with writing future chapters and then coming back. Better to write what is inspiring you at the moment than to force yourself to wait. I've done that "forced to wait" thing before and sometimes it means I lose my interest in the scene by the time I get to it, and it's way shittier than it would have been if I'd written it when I was passionate.
Goodreads didn’t notify me that you had replied. T_T
No, you hadn’t mentioned it before but I also follow that format for my story. Its fantasy as well and it feels like characters just morph from the blue sometimes. I’ll check out your template to use though because the way I have mine set up must not be beneficial for me. I also didn’t know you had a page full of helpful writing resources! I’m glad you thought to bring it up.
I’ve seriously thought about restructuring it the way you mentioned. I’ve restructured this bad boy so much over the years I suppose it is to be expected, but I thought I was on a roll! Many times a scene will come together while I’m sleeping or just sitting and listening to music. I have little pocket scenes everywhere. I’ll laugh out loud if it happens that the only way I can finish is by moving from the middle to the beginning, and then middle to end.
Sure! I’ll poke you every other week to see how the story is progressing, and I hope you’ll do the same!
lol well if it turns out you do finish it by writing it totally out of order, but the final product of it is chronological, there's nothing wrong with that either. It would make for a pretty funny, interesting story about how the book was written :)
So far I think that's the only resource I have up but if there's anything else that you've wished someone else had made writing-resource-wise let me know, I've been thinking I should add more stuff but just haven't had any other ideas. I hope the template helps!
Also, just a question but - I remember reading somewhere that someone had written out scenes (or at least, notes that made it clear which scene it was) on individual notecards, and then they set all those notecards down on the floor and stepped back, and moved them around until they felt like the flow made sense. Then they were able to more easily sit down and write the chronology in a bullet point format. I wonder if something like that may help you? To look at it from a different perspective, one more tangible, where it's a lot easier to physically move the things to signify a shift in where it would go in the story, rather than dealing with it all digitally.
btw I'm thinking things like "A + B meet" or "A + C talk about ___" or "C has ___big event___" as the sort of thing that would be written on the notecards, so you aren't writing out the whole thing on the notecards, just enough info for you to know what it means.
Does this even make any sense? WHO KNOWS. I'm at that time of the day where I'm suddenly very tired...
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Oh man, I'm with you on Scrivener. It's wayyyy too fun adding all this random info because it's so easy to organize or add a doc here or there and keep track of it.I can't remember, did I mention this before? If so, ignore me! If not, maybe it's helpful?
I had that backstory issue a lot in the past, plus I kept forgetting really simple details about characters in other long stories, like sometimes even how old they were exactly or what their exact shade of skin was describe as being and etc. (Like, I'd know they were generally whatever complexion, but how did I describe them vs someone else with a similar complexion?) Or even hairstyle or whatever. Not even getting into needing to remember motivations or family member names or this or that.
Anyway, what I did was I created a pretty thorough character bio summary with a bunch of questions about the character, some really simple like age/height/weight/gender/pronouns/etc, others more complex like what would build them up as a person and what would break them down. I create one of these bio questionnaires for each of my main characters now, in this fantasy story, and I fill it all out right away with a number of characters, and others I fill in as I go and more information comes to me.
I made it available for download in case it's helpful for anyone else. You can find it here: http://aisylum.com/give-and-take/reso...
That is made for a fantasy story but you could easily change things around to fit whatever you need. But I keep that in my template section of Scrivener and copy/paste it into a new doc in scrivener and go to town. That template has been invaluable to me in being able to put backstory info while also more easily connecting information between characters.
Some characters have like, 10,000+ words written in their "summary of past" section, detailing basically a whole fic right there about events in their life, while others I was able to keep to a more modest 1000 words or so overviewing their info.
I was going to check if I gave you this link already, but then it occurred to me that even if I did, maybe someone else will see this and it will help them.
Anyway, don't get down on yourself, either! That backstory will probably be invaluable once you really get going on the story. And, who knows, maybe at some point you may even decide to restructure your view of the story so that the backstory becomes part of the story itself. And if so, that means you wrote a bunch of chapters already in advance :)
We should start biweekly check-ins or something lol "Did you get any writing done?" "How many words did you write?" "Did you finally write the chapter summary or are you still going at it a bit randomly?"
Also, don't discount the helpfulness of popping all around the story. If you're really into a future scene, if your story doesn't matter if you write it chronologically or not, then I say go for it with writing future chapters and then coming back. Better to write what is inspiring you at the moment than to force yourself to wait. I've done that "forced to wait" thing before and sometimes it means I lose my interest in the scene by the time I get to it, and it's way shittier than it would have been if I'd written it when I was passionate.
Goodreads didn’t notify me that you had replied. T_TNo, you hadn’t mentioned it before but I also follow that format for my story. Its fantasy as well and it feels like characters just morph from the blue sometimes. I’ll check out your template to use though because the way I have mine set up must not be beneficial for me. I also didn’t know you had a page full of helpful writing resources! I’m glad you thought to bring it up.
I’ve seriously thought about restructuring it the way you mentioned. I’ve restructured this bad boy so much over the years I suppose it is to be expected, but I thought I was on a roll! Many times a scene will come together while I’m sleeping or just sitting and listening to music. I have little pocket scenes everywhere. I’ll laugh out loud if it happens that the only way I can finish is by moving from the middle to the beginning, and then middle to end.
Sure! I’ll poke you every other week to see how the story is progressing, and I hope you’ll do the same!
lol well if it turns out you do finish it by writing it totally out of order, but the final product of it is chronological, there's nothing wrong with that either. It would make for a pretty funny, interesting story about how the book was written :) So far I think that's the only resource I have up but if there's anything else that you've wished someone else had made writing-resource-wise let me know, I've been thinking I should add more stuff but just haven't had any other ideas. I hope the template helps!
Also, just a question but - I remember reading somewhere that someone had written out scenes (or at least, notes that made it clear which scene it was) on individual notecards, and then they set all those notecards down on the floor and stepped back, and moved them around until they felt like the flow made sense. Then they were able to more easily sit down and write the chronology in a bullet point format. I wonder if something like that may help you? To look at it from a different perspective, one more tangible, where it's a lot easier to physically move the things to signify a shift in where it would go in the story, rather than dealing with it all digitally.
btw I'm thinking things like "A + B meet" or "A + C talk about ___" or "C has ___big event___" as the sort of thing that would be written on the notecards, so you aren't writing out the whole thing on the notecards, just enough info for you to know what it means.
Does this even make any sense? WHO KNOWS. I'm at that time of the day where I'm suddenly very tired...
"We can't write this scene yet! Such and such character has to be fleshed out! NO STOP WUTRUDOIN?!? LETS GO WRITE THEIR FULL BACKSTORY FIRST."
So then I spend a ridiculous amount of time writing the backstory. Thanks to Scrivener I have waaaaay too much fun organizing the information and completely lose track of where I was to begin with.
I also have a major problem with getting through the beginning of the book. I know how I want it to start generally, but getting from A to B in chronological order just shreds my little mind. I end up writing chapters for things about a third of the way in the book. Insert backstory addiction. Rinse and Repeat. Its terrible.
My word count is about 3/4 of yours for the main document. But dat backstory document? Might as well be the novel. Its ridiculous. I also have the same issue with the chapter summary. Its just...ugh. I end up looking at the ceiling and getting caught up in something else.
I've been feeling a little meh and procrastinating lately so haven't written in a few weeks. I was going through my messages randomly and saw our convo. Definitely a bit more motivated now!