As I said in my post yesterday, I`m working on Step 5 of Randy Ingermanson`s snowflake method of novel writing. Developing these character voices and going through the story from their points of view is a lot of fun, and I`m really enjoying it, but I keep getting stuck. But I`m not getting stuck on major plot points (that wouldn`t really make sense when I`m essentially telling the same story over and over again). My issue is time.
Randy`s method works well, I think, if you`re writing a fairly contained story, chronologically speaking. If pretty much everything happens within the space of a few days, weeks, or months, you`re probably good to keep rolling (I will admit that I`ve never read his books, so I don`t actually know if this is the case. It`s probably not the case, and I`m just being complicated). However, I`m writing a fairy tale of the princess variety. Nine times out of ten, this involves following the princess from her early days through to the actual story in some way. So my problem is remembering where events fall on the chain. Step 7 deals with some of this, as you develop a character`s history, birthdate, etc, but what happens when you`re working on Step 5, writing the story from your princess`s point of view, and you can`t remember how old she was when her parent(s) died? (It`s a fairy tale. If she has any family at all, she`s only allowed one parent. It`s a rule.)
I realize this shouldn`t be as big a deal as I`m making it out to be, but despite my overactive imagination, I actually have a very logical mind, and these kinds of things are important to me. So I think it`s very helpful to me to lay out a timeline for the whole story.
Important: This is not to be confused with or substituted for Step 8 of the snowflake method. Step 8 is so much more detailed than what I need to be working with right now, as it`s basically a chapter index.
I don`t need to know every incident I will write about. I want the timeline for my story as it would appear in a history textbook. If my story centers on a war, I need to plot the major points of that war (when it begins, important battles, when it ends). Then I need to figure out where my characters`s lives fall along those events. When did the Capulet/Montague feud begin? At what point along that line were Romeo and Juliet born? In the traditional Beauty and the Beast story, when were each of the sisters born? How old were they when their father lost his wealth?
Again, these details might not seem important to every person, but I find them extremely helpful. If you were writing the character synopsis from Beauty`s point of view and you decide she was fourteen years old when her father`s wealth is lost, that`s great, but when you`re telling the story from a sister`s perspective, she`s not going to relate the story in terms of Beauty`s age, she`s going to tell it in terms of her own. You may also discover by plotting this way that you`ve left yourself some pretty huge gaps between major events, and you have to evaluate whether you think you can realistically fill that time, dismiss that time, or if maybe you have to change your character`s ages or your country`s history a bit. If Donkeyskin escaped her father at, say, fourteen, and your plan is to have her marry the prince and live happily ever after at twenty-one, can you conceivably fill seven years of Donkeyskin`s life with running and servitude? Don`t worry about scribbling down everything that happens, though; just think seriously about it. If you can, that`s awesome! If you don`t think you can, though, you might want to shave a few years off somewhere, and that might change how your character views the world. Donkeyskin is going to have different experiences and worldviews at fourteen than she is if you up her age to eighteen.
So endeth the lesson.
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