unij | (no subject)

Oh my god you guys I am so bad at coming up with an actual, solid, planned plot.

My teacher, noticing how generally panicked and depressed I was over my lack of productivity, agreed with me that it would be best if I was given solid deadlines, rather than the loosey-goosey, open-ended thing that a lot of my classmates are doing, she'd assign me specific dates to show her bits of my project.

Her first deadline was to have a solid outline of the story, specifically the ending, e-mailed to her by Monday at the latest. She's a firm believer that having an ending when you start is the most important thing. You can change the ending while you work, but you have to have an ending in mind. And this is, as far as I have known from looking at the processes of others, an entirely accurate assumption. But I have never been able to come up with a solid ending for anything I've done. Ever. I come up with characters, basic premises, a starting point and a few bits of things to happen along the way. I always hope I'll come up with more later. This may explain why I've never actually finished anything.

Anyway, point is, I'm sitting here staring at the paper, and realizing I have no freaking clue where to go with this. It is unbelievably frustrating to just be caught up on the outline.

Arrrgh

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hmm, I tend not to get an ending in mind until I have a general idea of what my main conflict is going to be. And then, of course, my ending in mind ends up completely irrelevant by the time I get there.

I really never worked well off of outlines, tbh... but if your prof wants one but doesn't expect you to stick to it, I would just try to make some stuff up. Because, well, it's not like you have to stick to it.

Take your characters, figure out your conflict, and extrapolate from there. When you figure out your ending, you don't also need to figure out your epilogue. (ie, you can say "well they defeat the dragon but the countryside is in ruins" without having to decide who hooks up and whether the king gets his throne back etc etc all your minor plotline endings)

You're doing the two illusionists story, right? With the older and the new one? Which one is the the focal character? I seem to remember the newer one was a hot-shot using illusions for whatever and not respecting the craft. An ending for him could be an understanding to respect it after he... lost the ability for a while and had to do without, got into huge amounts of trouble, got thoroughly schooled by the older illusionist and so on.

For outlines, I try to think of it in parts. I don't start from the beginning then go to the end. I jump around the story's timeline and the story's narrative timeline. By halfway I want the story to be around here. This scene before that scene. Then I go into fill in the details more. It's more of a brainstorming exercise. I don't stick to the word of it and will reorganize or rearrange if need be. Scrap pieces of paper are great for this. Just start writing down scenes and ideas, even if they ultimately won't work or seem similar to something you've already written. It's also helpful to carry images and metaphors through the piece, like the repeating appearance of a Joker card.

If you can, also find an example of your medium, like a short completed comic or story. Look at how the story is structured, the ending, the beginning, the climax.

And if you are doing a comic still, page thumbnails are very helpful for trying to keep page layout balanced and varied from page to page. Helps with pacing too. =Db