My Journey To The Wattys 2020

Day 215

This entry I actually intended to post a few days ago but as luck would have it, my computer ate my text. Twice. So here I am trying to rewrite something again, trying to remember what I said the first time around.

This brings up a good first point for this chapter. Backups! Don't underestimate the power of backups.

Obviously, there are a ton of different ways of backing up your work. Some use USB drives, others print their stuff. I use Dropbox.

For those not familiar with Dropbox, it's a cloud storage provider that provides a handy piece of software that backs up files in certain folders whenever there's a change to a file. So, for example, if I'm sitting plugging away in Scrivener with my story, when I save the changes to that files are immediately backed up to the cloud. This also means that I can go to another computer, if I like, and continue writing there. I actually do this quite a bit. I have a full-size laptop as my primary writing computer and a Chromebook I use for on the go writing. Not to mention, if something happens to one or the other, whether it breaks or is stolen, your work is always backed up in the cloud.

So, lesson learned: always have a backup system!

Now, my plan for this chapter did not include backups, it had more to do with my recent efforts to map out my story. I've detailed some of my struggles in the prior chapters, even with using the Snowflake method.

The one thing I realized this week, and in particular after listening to Stephen King, is that the story needs to be realistic. I'm not talking about obeying the laws of physics and such, but the behaviors of my characters. If I tell you that you're going to die tomorrow, are you likely to freak out or go to sleep? I'm betting the former. That kind of realism. It's the kind of thing that can be hard to capture in a high-level outline but something you need to write a good story.

So I took a bit of a step back and went back to the method I used for Intervention, which I think roughly equates to step four or five of the Snowflake method. I started going through the story at a high level with "realism" in mind. As much as I want the story to go a certain way, if I'm going to outline it, I need to let the characters speak and express their will on the story. What would they do in certain situations, what should other characters expect their reaction to be?

With that in mind, I actually started using one of my favorite tools for brainstorming: mindmaps. It's been years since I used on last but I used these all the time years ago, just to get a visual of the whole story in one place.

But, as I started going down this path, I remembered that although mindmaps are great for brainstorming, they feel insufficient for what I'm trying to do. Instead, I went back to Scrivener and loaded up the corkboard view, using the virtual yellow sticky notes to create the flow of the story. It currently looks something like this:

What I've found so far is that it's working pretty well. I'm jotting down the high-level aspects of the story, figuring out what works and what doesn't. I feel quite a bit less stressed out and I can let the characters kind of behave naturally and get to know them, just as when I'm just pantsing along. Despite the fact that I'm actually not even really writing anything besides short summaries of events. 

So, even though I kind of took a step backward in my story development, progress took a step forward. Considering the timeline I've set for myself, I think I'm in pretty good shape.

Of course, any timeline without a complication is not a real timeline. Over the last few weeks, I've resisted the urge to join the Open Novella Contest mania. I've had a story that fits perfectly with one of the promptsready and I've actually had the first 2k written and ready to go. In fact, I'm actually closer to 8k total with this story. I just didn't want it to interfere with this project.

But, yesterday I bit the bulled and decided to jump in with both feet. I've published the first chapter of Hive Island - The Awakening, which you can read elsewhere on my profile. It's a zombie story, of all things.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know if I'll finish this story or not, considering my Wattys planning, but we'll see. However, I'll say this: even though this story does not contribute directly towards my Wattys goal, it gets the creative juices going. Sometimes that's just as important. If you ever get stuck with that monster they call Writer's Block, switch to something else. I constantly have multiple projects in the works. That way, there's always something I can write on as it's unlikely I won't be inspired to write anything. If I get stuck on the Wattys project, I'll switch over to this for a bit etc.

In conclusion, overall I feel pretty good about this past week even though I've had to regroup a bit. My plan at the moment is to follow through with the story at a high level in Scrivener, then go back and go through some of the other steps of the Snowflake method. It may not be in sequence but if it works, that's all that matters right?

Before I close out, I also want to highlight that yesterday the official Wattys profile posted a chapter on preparing for your story. It's well worth a read and incidentally ties into some of what I've been talking about this past week. It's also a good initiative on their part to help guide us writers to success so I warmly recommend it.

Now, back to outlining! What are your plans for the weekend?