![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aryanhwyToday I wrote a chapter where I had the skeleton but not the words. "still need more words here", my PDF says in read, and a few paragraphs later "more words here", and 1/3 of a page later, "words", and in the next line "words".
I know what happens, but I could no longer face the fact that I don't entirely know WHY.
So tonight, I sat down, and instead of writing more story, I started making a list of all the true things that I know about the world that I either haven't said yet or where I have gestured to them but where I know I haven't said enough that anyone else would get them.
This has been incredibly helpful.
It is remarkably like writing a research paper and writing down true things until you figure out what your argument is. Because what is plot if not an argument? These are the bits and pieces that you need to know here, the ones you need to know there, the ones you need now, the ones you need then, and then BAM you get your main theorem, or your major crisis/denoument, and then it's just a matter of the conclusion, of wrapping up loose ends, and maybe saying something about future work.
Plot was always the bit I had the hardest part with, before. I didn't know how to make things happen, or how to build more structure than just "and then they did this and then they did this, and then they did this." If I had known how useful this last decade of not-writing (fiction) would be to my writing (fiction) I would've been a lot less disconsolate when I felt that I had given up on something that had been so central to my identity before.
Because, hey, folks, I've figured out how to write plot! And it's just like writing a research paper, except I can make up the facts.
I know what happens, but I could no longer face the fact that I don't entirely know WHY.
So tonight, I sat down, and instead of writing more story, I started making a list of all the true things that I know about the world that I either haven't said yet or where I have gestured to them but where I know I haven't said enough that anyone else would get them.
This has been incredibly helpful.
It is remarkably like writing a research paper and writing down true things until you figure out what your argument is. Because what is plot if not an argument? These are the bits and pieces that you need to know here, the ones you need to know there, the ones you need now, the ones you need then, and then BAM you get your main theorem, or your major crisis/denoument, and then it's just a matter of the conclusion, of wrapping up loose ends, and maybe saying something about future work.
Plot was always the bit I had the hardest part with, before. I didn't know how to make things happen, or how to build more structure than just "and then they did this and then they did this, and then they did this." If I had known how useful this last decade of not-writing (fiction) would be to my writing (fiction) I would've been a lot less disconsolate when I felt that I had given up on something that had been so central to my identity before.
Because, hey, folks, I've figured out how to write plot! And it's just like writing a research paper, except I can make up the facts.
