When you daydreamed as a kid did you frequently ‘do over’ things. Basically an idea would occur to you part way through and you’d have to go back to the beginning and ‘press play’ to run through it again till the new stuff was put in…
I’ve always done this. It’s only now I realize (with amusement) how intent my daydreaming was. Such furious plotting! And it all had to make sense. If it were planning an escape route (usually when stuck in a very boring school assembly or church service.. I’d imagine dinosaurs were attacking and how/where to get out..) I’d go over and over the route trying to ‘rationalize’ whether or not I could actually do it. This would take a while and then I’d go back to the beginning to play it all out again, on that movie screen in my head, delighting in being the heroine *hee*
Now I find this habit incredibly useful for plotting my stories. I have all the ‘Major events/climaxes’ plotted out and then I go through all the minor ones. Some that I had in mind from the beginning of planning BirthRight have been discarded. This is because they weren’t practical when I got to the ‘now how would they actually do this in real life’ part (I know, I know – it’s a novel.. not real life.. but it needs to be believable!). My next two installments in the BirthRight are drawn out on monster sheets of paper and taped to the back of my door. This way I can add ‘snippets’ and minor events easily (post its!) to see how it looks. I know that some people don’t like plotting and even Stephen King doesn’t consider it necessary (not particularly anyway) but for me it’s essential. It’s the same reason I sketch the characters. The better I can see it physically the clearer it is in my head and then the sharper it is on the paper.
It’s all a point of view I guess *grin* so what’s your POV on plotting – do you have any clever methods?
