Break Out Of Beginning Tizzy

I have written a number of posts about outlining and various other writing craft posts that don't seem to be about procrastination but can get you over the hump of the dreaded beginning.

On this co-blog
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com 
I post on Tuesdays.

You can start with these posts and follow the links in the post back along this discussion subject and forward with each Tuesday.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-tricks-of-scene-structure-part-2.html

Or here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/writers-eye-finds-symmetry.html

Or here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

There are writers who "should" not "outline". 

Academic training can ruin your native ability to "outline" for the purposes of fiction because the process and the resulting document called an "outline" for a novel are totally different from the necessary "outline" for a paper.

To break out of the Beginning Tizzy, I would suggest the following.

1) name your protagonist
2) name your antagonist
3) do NOT write character sketches or biographies for them; make it up as you go along, and conform it in rewrite so it makes logical sense.  Do not attempt logical sense in outline level.
4) Find the moment when the protagonist and antagonist first come into conflict.  That is parag 1 of your novel.
5) Determine the "ending" (just determine success or failure -- NOT in detail about what happens and how).  Just determine who wins in the end, who prevails.  The rest you can make up as you go along.  The one who prevails is the protag.
6) Determine the Middle.  If the ending is success, winning, Happily Ever After, the middle is the low-point of the protag's life, the worst thing that can possibly happen to that person.  If the ending is failure, the middle is the best moment of the protag's life.
7) With those guideposts in place, start drafting, and just TELL THE  STORY, and nevermind everything else because you'll do that on second draft.

Knowing and doing aren't the same thing.  If you are one of those few writers who should not outline, and that is evident because you crash and burn on even beginning an outline, then do try this method by using the following procedure.

OUTLINE is done in your head -- very little writing it down because it's not for anyone but you.  Do not go get a notebook, do not use pieces of paper, do not organize your ideas under headings.  Once you've broken the barrier of The Beginning, you may want to use 3X5 cards, or screenwriting software with "cards view" open, but if you are crashing on the beginning, you probably should avoid even cards. 

The best way for these special writers to do it is to open and name a word processor file, write the title and byline at the top.

Then paste in those 7 steps I listed above into the file.  Space down under each point and type what goes there.  Now go back up to the top and insert your opening line.

You concoct the opening line from the conflict that will be resolved between the two opposing forces, or conflicting forces.

E.G. "I told you already!  When the bullet smacked into the wall beside my head, I knew my number was up!"

Once you have that opening line, you won't be able to stop typing.  When you run out of what comes next, scroll down into your "outline" delete the parts you've done, and look at the next signpost in the plot.  That will tell you what comes next.

You can skip whole scenes and event threads to leap to the next signpost, and as you're writing that point, you can fill in the "outline" as you think of things that come in the blank spot you skipped over.  Then tomorrow go craft that bridge scene (as per my blog post on scenes).

Remember, write it wrong on purpose, then go back and fix it once you've written THE END.

If this method doesn't work for you, it means you've gotten the opening line wrong.  If you get it right, you can't stop writing.

You may be interested in my Sime~Gen Universe in which I sometimes collaborate with Professor Jean Lorrah.
http://www.simegen.net

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (for current available)
http://simegen.com/jl/   (for complete bio-biblio)

WorldBuilding - Trunk-ated

This is an exercise in WORLDBUILDING.

This exercise takes off from my blog post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/paradigm-shift.html

followed by my blog post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/paranormal-romance.html

The theory is to select the story you want to tell, then wrap the world around it. Create the background and backstory to support what you want your story to say.

What your story says is your theme.

Take the following opening scene, use Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet (which works for novels as well as for films) and create the rest of this plot in single line, half-sentence, or even single word entries in the beat sheet.

http://www.blakesnyder.com/tools/ is where to download the beat sheet. It's currently item #2 in the list there. There is an example of a famous movie fitted into this beat sheet lower down that page.

Write a couple of paragraphs sketching the Worldbuilding around the plot.

For example: if your beat sheet calls for Trish, the lead female, to die and return as a ghost to haunt the guy who killed her, your worldbuilding notes would say that ghosts are real and can communicate with the living, maybe give rules for how a ghost could affect the solid world.

Post the result as a comment here on this blog.

---------Story Opening ------------
Title: Trunk-ated
by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Permissions: Use Freely to do this Worldbuilding exercise


Trish clenched her fists which were tied behind her and kicked hard with her legs tied at the ankle and knee. Her face inched closer to the open lock of her car's trunk. Her nose entered a shaft of sunlight.

She squinted up at her captor who smirked down at her. When her captor's attention flicked aside, she spat her chewing gum into the lock and prayed.

Back turned, her captor slammed the trunk lid which caught with an odd thwunk sound.

She lay in the pitch dark, smelling every pizza she'd ever carried in the trunk of her 1962 Cadillac and blessed the writers of the TV Series Forever Knight. Finally, she heard the crunch of gravel under booted feet, then silence.

She calmed herself then summoned a sparkle of power to her fingertips. She twisted her fingers until she had a bit of rope between them. With a tiny, delicate push, she burned the rope, scorched her flesh, burned some more and severed the rope.

Nearby, a truck engine turned over with a ragged cough. The truck gunned onto the highway and dopplered away. Silence. Not even one passing car.

With a heave and a squirm, Trish freed her hands, burned through the ropes at her knees and ankles then levered her back up against the trunk lid. She bounced the Caddy on its shocks to free the latch. She thought she'd suffocate before it gave, made a mental note to get the interior catch release changed, and finally, the lid swung up trailing a long strand of gum.

She ashed the gum with a flash of power, slammed the lid and strode the length of the car, one hand trailing the upswept fin. Local urban legend had it this car had two hundred fifty ghosts under the hood and vampire blood in the tank. It was a whole lot more than that.

---------End Opening--------------

HINTS: Answer the questions raised as you read this opening.
a) who is Trish?
b) who tied her up?
c) who put her in the trunk of her car?
d) why was she left beside a deserted road instead of killing her?
e) how did she come to drive a 1962 Caddy - and is it REALLY just a classic Caddy?
f) does she do "magic" or is her fire just ESP? Is there a demon or familiar involved?
g) does the Caddy conceal an A.I.?
h) is Trish actually human? Or an alien from outer space? Alternate Universe? Elf?
i) was that actually chewing gum?
j) if she has such "powers" -- how and why did she let herself be captured and tied up?
k) was there an accomplice lurking behind her captor? Had they captured someone else when they captured her? Was it the someone else who was being kidnapped?
l) what will Trish do about the guy who tied her up?
m) what is her internal conflict? Her external conflict? Is her captor really her enemy or a double agent she didn't want to uncover?
n) what is her objective? Will she succeed?
o) maybe change the title to fit your theme

Note how this and many more questions are carefully NOT answered but only raised by this opening. This is a demonstration of the technique I have discussed on the Alien Romance blog which I call Information Feed. First make the reader curious; then provide answers dispersed amid the action.

Yes, you may rewrite this opening for this exercise. But you'll learn more by doing the exercise based on this opening. What is not-included in this opening is easily as important as what is included. The lack of certain information is as important as the presence of what is there.

Playing with this exercise will sharpen your ability to create this kind of open textured springboard for a story with a complex backstory and background.

You may post your "beats" of the plot and your Worldbuilding paragraphs in the comments section of this blog where others may comment or post other visions of what this story could become.

You may do one version of this story as SCIENCE FICTION and another as FANTASY and/or another as PARANORMAL ROMANCE -- or even SCIENCE FICTION ROMANCE.

See how the same story can scroll out against the different backgrounds and end up qualifying in another genre.

You may decide to do this exercise and not post the results here but instead use it in your own novel.

After you finish the exercise, take a universe that you know well and have fleshed out in detail and write a story opening patterned on this one -- designed to spark questions in the reader's mind by not-saying many of the most important things about your universe.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/