A Different Point Of View

On the second day of the year I went with Samara to collect our Christmas presents to each other, our Merlin passes. These are yearly passes to several attractions including Sydney Aquarium, Oceanworld, Sydney Wildlife Park and Centrepoint (sorry, Sydney Tower Eye ... cause that's such a catchy name). We got our photo pass at the last of these then went up the elevator, popped our ears a few times, and had a look about.

I'd never been up there before and it really is a gorgeous view and it was such a clear day too. I suddenly thought how cool it would've been to have been up there while they were filming the helicopter scene in The Matrix so we had a look to spot the roof Neo landed on. It looks a little different but we found it all right.

Afterwards we quite naturally went to Kinokuniya for a bit of a browse. On the $10 sale table a book caught my attention and I had to buy it. Terry Brooks' Sometimes the Magic Works is a look at his writing life with advice for unpublished authors and wannabe writers. It seemed to fit in well with what's been going on so far this year. It certainly inspired me somewhat given I read it in two days.

On the topic of planning your work, which I revelled in Stoppard saying was unnecessary, Brooks takes a very different view. He firstly admits that many famous writers do not outline before they write, they just jump in and see where they end up. Good for them he says, he also points out the number of rewrites and full redrafts these writers do; the amount of work is the same as when you plan your story in advance, it's just done in a different order.

He on the other hand much prefers to have a blueprint of where he wants to go. It's not a rigid outline but a reliable plan on which to fall back on. It contains a general idea of the plot, character arcs and ambitions, scenes and background information. There's a lot of worked involved, although to be honest it sounds rather fun if you like world building the way I do.

Reading Terry Brooks' case for outlining so soon after Tom Stoppard's case against it made me stop to think, what exactly is my process? It's actually possible that my dry period is partly due to my abandoning my process, or not really knowing what it is. This blog is as much me trying to work it out for myself as share any insights with anyone else.

I think I may be somewhere between the two poles. I love world building and dreaming up characters, but I also like to leap in with stories and see where I end up. The problem is the number of times I end up at a dead end or a ponderous crossing I can't see across. The very spot Brooks mentions as being due to a lack of organisation; if I had my blueprint I'd be able to ford the stream and keep going strong on the other side. In short more pieces would get finished because I wouldn't lose interest from not having any idea what to do next.

And, when I think about it, I have often done some planning and outlining, just not always in the beginning. The other thing this allows me is to write scenes out of order. The play I just finished consists of five short episodes, I planned the episodes then wrote them in whatever order I felt like. So again, it was the planning that got me through to a finished piece, even with months in between putting pen to paper – I always knew what needed to be written.

The real lesson from both these perspectives is to get into it. Find the process that works best for me, which I think I have, and apply myself to it.

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