{"id":680,"date":"2010-08-18T18:37:15","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T22:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=680"},"modified":"2010-08-18T18:37:15","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T22:37:15","slug":"novel-plotting-and-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=680","title":{"rendered":"Novel plotting and stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Midway through week 8 of Animation Mentor!  This week we&#8217;re studying the basic walk cycle, so by Sunday I&#8217;ll have a basic walk blocked out; next week I&#8217;ll do the inbetweens.  There&#8217;s a lot of stuff going on in a walk, so it does get a bit complicated, especially if you&#8217;ve never done it before, but it&#8217;s fun!<\/p>\n<p>In other news, I&#8217;ve started plotting out my novel, <em>The Designers<\/em>, which won the poll <a href=\"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=676\">a few posts ago<\/a>.  Of course, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll call it that, but that will be its codename.  I think it&#8217;s quite a strange book.  I wouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s innovative, because nothing is innovative, especially if you think it is.  But I guess I could say it&#8217;s innovative to me&#8230; there are a lot of thorny storytelling issues to deal with&#8230; how do I create danger for this character?  How do I get this character to seem important to an audience?  I&#8217;m kind of trying to challenge the traditional answers to these questions, though I don&#8217;t think I can really escape them.  It will be interesting.  (But not <em>that<\/em> interesting.)<\/p>\n<p>(The other novel I was plotting a few months ago was <em>The Protectors<\/em>, which got no votes.  That one still needs a lot more plotting anyway.  For now, it will be put aside, along with all those plans I had made.  Though I did say at the time I made them that I didn&#8217;t think I&#8217;d follow them.  See, I was right!)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also trying to keep the overall plot nice and short.  My last few novels that I&#8217;ve planned or started writing (I&#8217;ve never finished one) were huge epics.  OK, maybe not <em>huge<\/em>, but probably too complex for a first novel.  So I&#8217;m trying to keep this one really short and tight.  Just two or three character storylines with short overarching plots.  Hey, I can write sequels if I want, let&#8217;s actually <em>finish<\/em> something first.  For now, nice and short and to-the-point.  I&#8217;m going to try to make the &#8220;epicness&#8221; come from the ideas, the plot, <em>not<\/em> the length.<\/p>\n<p>To help me plan out the novel, I created a private wiki for myself, kinda like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wizardwalk.com\/hanniwiki\/index.php5?title=Main_Page\">Hanniwiki<\/a>, except it&#8217;s a top secret private one that I can&#8217;t tell you anything about.  The secrets within would just blow your mind, you can&#8217;t handle the truth!  Anyway, it&#8217;s been quite useful so far; if you know how to install it and set it up, I think it&#8217;s a very useful tool for writers, great for keeping notes and stuff all organized and in one place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Midway through week 8 of Animation Mentor! This week we&#8217;re studying the basic walk cycle, so by Sunday I&#8217;ll have a basic walk blocked out; next week I&#8217;ll do the inbetweens. There&#8217;s a lot of stuff going on in a walk, so it does get a bit complicated, especially if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[220,4],"tags":[219,264],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-aY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}