In my previous post I talked about using the Tarot to outline your project. There is no doubt that having a good outline is the preferred way to tackle any writing project. It's very comforting to know which way the story is going so you can take it there. I read recently that writing without an outline is like jumping in the car and starting on a journey without knowing where you are going. That would be anathema to many people. On the other hand, for some, it would be the epitome of adventure.
I read a book by Stephen King on writing a while back. I like what he said. I have to admit it's been awhile and I don't have it in front of me, so I may be sadly misquoting, if so, forgive me Mr. King! What he said was along the lines of "anything anybody tells you about writing is wrong, including me!" His point, I believe, is that you can read tons of books on writing, and I have, some of them agree on some points, disagree on others. You can become greatly confused unless you realize that what each writer is suggesting is what works for that one writer. By all means, read, get ideas, find methods to try. Don't be too upset if they don't all work for you. You will find tools that work with your project, and your own style of working. Writers are, if anything, different individuals. All of us have different viewpoints, different skills and different interests. Pick what works for you, toss the rest and don't feel too bad about it.
Another point, at least for me, is project specific. In my own experience no two projects have evolved the same way. One story grows from a character who appeals to me, another from a scene that appears full blown, still another appears with the ending already known. Each has its own problems, and requires different amounts and kinds of work to finish. You do what you have to do. Now and then a scene appears from nowhere, I write it down, another scene pops up later and it goes with that one. Not a very organized way to work, but it happens. Notebooks, file cards and/or the computer work well to contain those elements. Easy to enter them, file them (especially using the TiddlyWikiWrite tool I talked about in a previous post), and re-assemble them when the time is write. It's especially good when you are working on project A, and while you're in that creative frame of mind, scenes from a new project B pop up. You get them down, file them away, play with them later. By all means, get them down. I've forgotten whole encyclopedias of story ideas, thinking I'd surely remember them later!
A lot of writers, and some of them successful, do indeed start a story and just see where it takes them. They establish their characters and see where they go. No doubt, they waste some time doing that, although even scenes unused can be reused somewhere else, besides it all counts as good practice.
Be an organized writer, but organize it your way. Have fun, that's what it's all about. Certainly be willing to learn new ways, but don't agonize over it or try and force your round peg self into a square hole. Do what works.
Enjoy the journey, with or without a map!
Showing posts with label outline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outline. Show all posts
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Outlining by Tarot
So, here I am. I have three bonafide writing projects going, and a couple more in stasis. All have found new life partly because of some very nice usable writing software I've reported on before. All three main projects are also now nominally outlined, at least as much if not more than I have ever done in the past, using my tarot tool.
Here's how it works. Some knowledge of the tarot in general is helpful, but not critical. I have been taking classes from my tarot-teacher partner, Cat Dancing, and it has been a great help. The information is available in a lot of places, however. I'll give some basics below. For the most part this is directed only at using the tarot as a writing tool. Reading the tarot is a whole different subject!
If you know nothing yet about the tarot, think of a deck of regular playing cards. Usually, the court cards have pictures of the king, queen, jack. The numbered cards only have groupings of the suit, 5 clubs, 3 hearts, etc. A "standard" tarot deck has those same cards with two big differences. The suits are swords, cups, pentacles, and wands. Also, the court cards have one more character with king, queen, knight, page. This group of cards in a tarot deck are called the minor trumps. In addition, the tarot deck includes major trumps, a group of twenty two other cards including: The Fool, The Lovers, The Sun, and so on.
I have a lot of tarot decks. Most came from garage sales, personal gifts, and the local Half Price Books store. I used to collect the decks just for the art. Only a few do I actually read with, and not all would be much help for writing purposes. One of the best basic decks for this would be the standard Rider - Waite - Smith deck. (Let's call it the RWS for short) This one can be found almost anywhere. The selling point for this deck is that every card is illustrated with a scene. Some of the decks available only show the groups of each suit, much like those playing cards. The RWS deck, as I said, has a scene for each card. It is this that can give a new tarot reader, as well as a writer, some clues on meanings of cards. I would consider the RWS deck the basic deck for this, although there are several newer decks derived from that one that may speak to different writers even more clearly. One that I currently like is the Cosmic Tarot, by Norbert Losche. (U.S. Games). The characters appearing in this deck seem vaguely familiar, as if they were based on various classic film stars. This goes a long way for me in suggesting characters. Another interesting one is the "Flash Card Tarot" by Linda Nadeau. This deck has some rather unusual but often useful illustrations on one side, and the meanings and description on the back. It can be a useful imagination spark.
Now that you have your deck. You need some way to interpret the cards. First, try just studying each card, see what it suggests to you. Your first and best guide is your own intuition! Most decks come with their own little book, sometimes a big book, that explains the meanings. Let that be your second resource. Not everything listed in the card descriptions will be useful in your writing, but some will suggest ideas to you. There are many other books online and in print that give card information. The ultimate would be "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner. (See my link below). Ms. Kenner describes each card and what is useful for the writer, as well as giving many useful "spreads" or layouts to use. Corinne Kenner also has a useful companion book, "Tarot Journaling" that is just that, using the tarot to journal more effectively.
Now that we have those basics out of the way. Here is how I use the cards:
1. Outlining a book - Give some thought to what you intend to do. Let's say you want to pick a card for each division of the planned work. This might be chapters for a book, scenes for a play, perhaps steps in the journey. Come up with a usable number. I like to think it chapters, if I am working on a book. Forty-four is a sort of average number of chapters for many novels.
Shuffle the cards a number of times. Seven times is supposed to guarantee randomness. I personally shuffle three times, cut, then shuffle one more time. People draw cards in various ways. I like to just deal off the top of the deck in the order they are in. If we are outlining forty-four chapters, deal the cards out face up one by one in four rows of eleven.
Some of the cards will be upright, some may be reversed. If we want added complexity, we can take the reverses into account, or we can simply see them all as upright. Make a list of the cards. I use the novel software I'm using (yWriter5 in this case) and note the card into each chapter notes. As you note each card, notice anything that catches your attention about the card that may indicate character, or plot, or setting, anything, and write that down as well. You might then look up each card in one of those books or resources and make additional notes.
It may be that some of the chapters thus laid out may need to be re-arranged for better flow. It's okay to do that. You can even discard cards that don't seem to work, and draw new ones. The tarot police won't care. This is your tool, you use it however works best for you. In my initial layout for my mystery novel, the first card drawn didn't really work for me as first chapter, however, I put is aside as an indicator of overall story, and used the second card as first chapter, and the rest fell into place pretty well. Don't be afraid to deviate. This is just a starting place, idea material. Once you have the larger divisions, the chapters, laid out in this manner, you may want to re-shuffle and draw cards for minor divisions, like scenes. It's all up to you. As for meanings, you can be literal, or imaginative. The Death card may mean a literal death, in your story, or it may be a major transition of some sort. The Fool can mean an innocent stumbling into the scene, or it might be time to look at things from a fresh point of view, to use "beginner mind" as the Zen teachers put it.
2. Character - You can draw cards to help define your characters, maybe even suggest names (with some imagination.) The court cards are most helpful for this, although any of the other cards can also suggest characters, or the character's traits. As you make a bio for your characters, use the tarot to suggest entries for those areas that aren't clear to you yet, background, habits, goals, that sort of thing. Simplest would be one card for one item, see what it suggests. Many times I use a 3 card spread. I do the usual shuffle, cut the deck somewhere near the center. The top card in the exposed half is the middle card. The card just below it is the third card, and the card that was just above it is the first card in the three card row. These three can mean many things, but I usually rank them in some sort of past, present, future context about whatever I'm getting a reading on. I just pulled three cards in this fashion. The Hermit, Justice, and the Chariot. I'm using the Cosmic Tarot deck. The Hermit shows a mystical guru type, almost a stereotypical hippy, sitting in the night near a lantern. A seeker. Also someone to seek out for knowledge, perhaps. Justice shows a woman with a crown between night and day. Scales of balance are in front of her, she sees truth. The Chariot shows a chariot, pulled by two wild horses, one black, one white, being driven by a kingly figure away from a castle. What might this mean to you? Perhaps it is a character, loner type, with a non-traditional education, seeks justice as society dictates, but is trampled by the established justice system.
3. Series - I projected my mystery novel into a series of novels with the same protagonist and settings. I spent a lot of enjoyable time inventing his hometown, and peopling it with interesting characters, why not make further use of it all? Besides, as I did all that background, I came up with a few ideas of other stories to tell. So, I thought, how about twelve books ? I did a twelve card layout similar to the "chapter" spread above. I let each card represent a book. Interestingly, the stories I had already thought of fit rather well into one of the twelve topics. In some cases titles were even suggested by the cards and the imagined situation. So, now I have a rough outline of where the whole series is going. That's good to have for any kind of series character.
For instance, The Hanged Man card came up. One of my ideas was a mystery involving genealogy. Bingo! Another card was the Wheel of Fortune. Ready made spot for something about the lottery!
These three techniques can give you a starting place. Enjoy!
Here's how it works. Some knowledge of the tarot in general is helpful, but not critical. I have been taking classes from my tarot-teacher partner, Cat Dancing, and it has been a great help. The information is available in a lot of places, however. I'll give some basics below. For the most part this is directed only at using the tarot as a writing tool. Reading the tarot is a whole different subject!
If you know nothing yet about the tarot, think of a deck of regular playing cards. Usually, the court cards have pictures of the king, queen, jack. The numbered cards only have groupings of the suit, 5 clubs, 3 hearts, etc. A "standard" tarot deck has those same cards with two big differences. The suits are swords, cups, pentacles, and wands. Also, the court cards have one more character with king, queen, knight, page. This group of cards in a tarot deck are called the minor trumps. In addition, the tarot deck includes major trumps, a group of twenty two other cards including: The Fool, The Lovers, The Sun, and so on.
I have a lot of tarot decks. Most came from garage sales, personal gifts, and the local Half Price Books store. I used to collect the decks just for the art. Only a few do I actually read with, and not all would be much help for writing purposes. One of the best basic decks for this would be the standard Rider - Waite - Smith deck. (Let's call it the RWS for short) This one can be found almost anywhere. The selling point for this deck is that every card is illustrated with a scene. Some of the decks available only show the groups of each suit, much like those playing cards. The RWS deck, as I said, has a scene for each card. It is this that can give a new tarot reader, as well as a writer, some clues on meanings of cards. I would consider the RWS deck the basic deck for this, although there are several newer decks derived from that one that may speak to different writers even more clearly. One that I currently like is the Cosmic Tarot, by Norbert Losche. (U.S. Games). The characters appearing in this deck seem vaguely familiar, as if they were based on various classic film stars. This goes a long way for me in suggesting characters. Another interesting one is the "Flash Card Tarot" by Linda Nadeau. This deck has some rather unusual but often useful illustrations on one side, and the meanings and description on the back. It can be a useful imagination spark.
Now that you have your deck. You need some way to interpret the cards. First, try just studying each card, see what it suggests to you. Your first and best guide is your own intuition! Most decks come with their own little book, sometimes a big book, that explains the meanings. Let that be your second resource. Not everything listed in the card descriptions will be useful in your writing, but some will suggest ideas to you. There are many other books online and in print that give card information. The ultimate would be "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner. (See my link below). Ms. Kenner describes each card and what is useful for the writer, as well as giving many useful "spreads" or layouts to use. Corinne Kenner also has a useful companion book, "Tarot Journaling" that is just that, using the tarot to journal more effectively.
Now that we have those basics out of the way. Here is how I use the cards:
1. Outlining a book - Give some thought to what you intend to do. Let's say you want to pick a card for each division of the planned work. This might be chapters for a book, scenes for a play, perhaps steps in the journey. Come up with a usable number. I like to think it chapters, if I am working on a book. Forty-four is a sort of average number of chapters for many novels.
Shuffle the cards a number of times. Seven times is supposed to guarantee randomness. I personally shuffle three times, cut, then shuffle one more time. People draw cards in various ways. I like to just deal off the top of the deck in the order they are in. If we are outlining forty-four chapters, deal the cards out face up one by one in four rows of eleven.
Some of the cards will be upright, some may be reversed. If we want added complexity, we can take the reverses into account, or we can simply see them all as upright. Make a list of the cards. I use the novel software I'm using (yWriter5 in this case) and note the card into each chapter notes. As you note each card, notice anything that catches your attention about the card that may indicate character, or plot, or setting, anything, and write that down as well. You might then look up each card in one of those books or resources and make additional notes.
It may be that some of the chapters thus laid out may need to be re-arranged for better flow. It's okay to do that. You can even discard cards that don't seem to work, and draw new ones. The tarot police won't care. This is your tool, you use it however works best for you. In my initial layout for my mystery novel, the first card drawn didn't really work for me as first chapter, however, I put is aside as an indicator of overall story, and used the second card as first chapter, and the rest fell into place pretty well. Don't be afraid to deviate. This is just a starting place, idea material. Once you have the larger divisions, the chapters, laid out in this manner, you may want to re-shuffle and draw cards for minor divisions, like scenes. It's all up to you. As for meanings, you can be literal, or imaginative. The Death card may mean a literal death, in your story, or it may be a major transition of some sort. The Fool can mean an innocent stumbling into the scene, or it might be time to look at things from a fresh point of view, to use "beginner mind" as the Zen teachers put it.
2. Character - You can draw cards to help define your characters, maybe even suggest names (with some imagination.) The court cards are most helpful for this, although any of the other cards can also suggest characters, or the character's traits. As you make a bio for your characters, use the tarot to suggest entries for those areas that aren't clear to you yet, background, habits, goals, that sort of thing. Simplest would be one card for one item, see what it suggests. Many times I use a 3 card spread. I do the usual shuffle, cut the deck somewhere near the center. The top card in the exposed half is the middle card. The card just below it is the third card, and the card that was just above it is the first card in the three card row. These three can mean many things, but I usually rank them in some sort of past, present, future context about whatever I'm getting a reading on. I just pulled three cards in this fashion. The Hermit, Justice, and the Chariot. I'm using the Cosmic Tarot deck. The Hermit shows a mystical guru type, almost a stereotypical hippy, sitting in the night near a lantern. A seeker. Also someone to seek out for knowledge, perhaps. Justice shows a woman with a crown between night and day. Scales of balance are in front of her, she sees truth. The Chariot shows a chariot, pulled by two wild horses, one black, one white, being driven by a kingly figure away from a castle. What might this mean to you? Perhaps it is a character, loner type, with a non-traditional education, seeks justice as society dictates, but is trampled by the established justice system.
3. Series - I projected my mystery novel into a series of novels with the same protagonist and settings. I spent a lot of enjoyable time inventing his hometown, and peopling it with interesting characters, why not make further use of it all? Besides, as I did all that background, I came up with a few ideas of other stories to tell. So, I thought, how about twelve books ? I did a twelve card layout similar to the "chapter" spread above. I let each card represent a book. Interestingly, the stories I had already thought of fit rather well into one of the twelve topics. In some cases titles were even suggested by the cards and the imagined situation. So, now I have a rough outline of where the whole series is going. That's good to have for any kind of series character.
For instance, The Hanged Man card came up. One of my ideas was a mystery involving genealogy. Bingo! Another card was the Wheel of Fortune. Ready made spot for something about the lottery!
These three techniques can give you a starting place. Enjoy!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Writing Tools
As a writer I often find it easy to come up with a scene I want to write, but no clear idea of where to go with it either before or after the scene. What is the overall story the scene fits within? I also tried working with various software programs, although I only considered a few affordable.
I really like "Power Structure", it's a well thought out writing program, of an outlining sort, with a lot of options. I also like "Story Weaver", somewhat similar to Power Structure in my mind, but more storytelling oriented. I could never get off the ground, though, with either of them. Both good programs, but neither really fit with what I wanted. Another person may try either one and find it a perfect fit. So it goes. You can look at both programs at http://storymind.com/.
Once upon a time I owned a Tandy Color Computer, cool machine. It actually had a very fast processor for the time. Most of my early plays were written on that Coco and the Telewriter-64 word processor. One other thing about the Coco that I liked was a little card-file program that was part of an office-suite that ran on the OS9 platform (sort of like Windows). It was a very simple card-file, had visual tabbed cards, you could enter info on individual cards on screen, sort them and search them in any way whatsoever. After I switched to the PC clones and Windows, I searched in vain for similar file program that was free, or cheap, and as easy to use. No luck.
Recently I've found a few free tools that address these issues very well. The first is yWriter5, a free program that really fits the way my mind works for writing a story/novel/play whatever. (Okay, it's not really formatted for plays, but it's not really a problem.) I really like the way it works. Check it out. http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html The programmer is also an author, his website is full of very good, simple information and advice for writing, including the next item on this list.
Second, I found another free brainstorming tool. Many of us have seen the method called clustering, or bubbles, much like the flow charts we used to use in programming. Freemind is another easy and free program to do the bubble diagrams, and use them for outlining. There is also a custom file for adapting the Freemind program for outlining a book. Contact me and I can get it to you.
Third. I found my card file, of sorts. TiddlyWikiWrite is a very simple, customized, program that gives you an offline website on your computer that makes a page for each thing you want to work on, whether it be a full story, an idea, a list of names, a journal, anything. Each page is unique, totally search-able, and you can assign keywords to streamline finding it again. It is very easy to set up however you want it. Lisa Janice Cohen is an author who took the basic TiddlyWiki program and customized it. Find it at her website. http://www.ljcohen.net/Tiddlywiki.htm
Lastly, maybe the best tool I've found could be the Tarot. Now, I've collected Tarot cards for many years. I love the art work, I knew next to nothing about actually reading the cards. My association with Cat Dancing has changed that. I've become much more selective on the collecting, but I'm learning to read them now. The cards lend themselves quite well in many ways in jump starting stories, building characters, generating back story, and just about every other facet of storytelling. I had already started using the cards in plotting a couple of stories, and a book I am reading just now, "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner, augments that process. What's even better, adding the Tarot works very well with the yWriter5 and other programs I mentioned above. There is no such thing as "writer's block" when you can grab the deck of Tarot cards for instant inspiration.
I'll talk more about my own method of using Tarot cards another time. In the meantime, give the tools above a try!
I really like "Power Structure", it's a well thought out writing program, of an outlining sort, with a lot of options. I also like "Story Weaver", somewhat similar to Power Structure in my mind, but more storytelling oriented. I could never get off the ground, though, with either of them. Both good programs, but neither really fit with what I wanted. Another person may try either one and find it a perfect fit. So it goes. You can look at both programs at http://storymind.com/.
Once upon a time I owned a Tandy Color Computer, cool machine. It actually had a very fast processor for the time. Most of my early plays were written on that Coco and the Telewriter-64 word processor. One other thing about the Coco that I liked was a little card-file program that was part of an office-suite that ran on the OS9 platform (sort of like Windows). It was a very simple card-file, had visual tabbed cards, you could enter info on individual cards on screen, sort them and search them in any way whatsoever. After I switched to the PC clones and Windows, I searched in vain for similar file program that was free, or cheap, and as easy to use. No luck.
Recently I've found a few free tools that address these issues very well. The first is yWriter5, a free program that really fits the way my mind works for writing a story/novel/play whatever. (Okay, it's not really formatted for plays, but it's not really a problem.) I really like the way it works. Check it out. http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html The programmer is also an author, his website is full of very good, simple information and advice for writing, including the next item on this list.
Second, I found another free brainstorming tool. Many of us have seen the method called clustering, or bubbles, much like the flow charts we used to use in programming. Freemind is another easy and free program to do the bubble diagrams, and use them for outlining. There is also a custom file for adapting the Freemind program for outlining a book. Contact me and I can get it to you.
Third. I found my card file, of sorts. TiddlyWikiWrite is a very simple, customized, program that gives you an offline website on your computer that makes a page for each thing you want to work on, whether it be a full story, an idea, a list of names, a journal, anything. Each page is unique, totally search-able, and you can assign keywords to streamline finding it again. It is very easy to set up however you want it. Lisa Janice Cohen is an author who took the basic TiddlyWiki program and customized it. Find it at her website. http://www.ljcohen.net/Tiddlywiki.htm
Lastly, maybe the best tool I've found could be the Tarot. Now, I've collected Tarot cards for many years. I love the art work, I knew next to nothing about actually reading the cards. My association with Cat Dancing has changed that. I've become much more selective on the collecting, but I'm learning to read them now. The cards lend themselves quite well in many ways in jump starting stories, building characters, generating back story, and just about every other facet of storytelling. I had already started using the cards in plotting a couple of stories, and a book I am reading just now, "Tarot for Writers" by Corinne Kenner, augments that process. What's even better, adding the Tarot works very well with the yWriter5 and other programs I mentioned above. There is no such thing as "writer's block" when you can grab the deck of Tarot cards for instant inspiration.
I'll talk more about my own method of using Tarot cards another time. In the meantime, give the tools above a try!
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