Organize Your Writers’ Ideas
New writers always ask me about writing novels. It seems that this is a secret that only a few mistresses can know. I told them that writing novels was interesting, but it took time. This is not only the time to write words on paper, but also the cycle your brain experiences when thinking about your ideas. A writer begins to perk up while driving, listening to music, attending boring meetings, or watching unconscious television. Your ideas will fly to this exciting world. In this world, you or your character will enjoy quarrels, killings, explosions or intimate love scenes. Your mind is full of inappropriate ideas. Sometimes it becomes overwhelming. Many writers start writing novels according to their intuition, and they prefer improvisation rather than stories. They create what happens to their characters with instant impulses and change the ending of the story every day. I have written two novels, and I prefer more specific ones.
I wrote my first novel Malay in 2007. I have never drawn chapters or even scenes. But I have a role. I know where it is going. I have an ending. I finished the first draft in 45 days(about 30 days), and wrote articles one by one in order. It is difficult to calculate the workload of a day, but it is difficult to complete. In a hurry, I put it away and didn’t even want to see it. At that time, I lacked the patience to be an editor and was disgusted with the idea of continuing to cooperate.
although there is the idea of “main line” of the second novel, this idea was not realized until the National Novel Writing Month(NaNoWriMo) in 2011. The second book is hard to start. I have an idea about the plot, but the place and time of inserting the plot into the painting are frightening. After my first novel, I don’t want to repeat the second one. I hope it’s easier. I want to know whether the story is progressing day by day, not ending. At that time, I joined the composition group and began to learn writing skills. I don’t know where I read it, but the solution to my confusion is to use index cards. I started to write the plot of the story on the index card(changing the direction of the story, about one third of the novel). If I have an idea about a scene, the characteristics of a character, or just about this book, I will write it to these 3X5 Yingqi blue beauties. From 2010 to 2011, I wrote a bunch of cards to write this book. In November 2011, when I wanted to write, there were more than 50 cards, some of which were:
• The nanny is an opera actress
• Brother was smoking heroin when the child was in the room
• The baby fell down the stairs and died
• Scars on hands
Some cards are reasonable, others you need to know what I’m thinking. Later, in order to generate a complete configuration file for each main role, we filtered the character feature cards and put them in a pile. I took the scene cards and began to piece together a novel. Now I am wondering whether all the ideas are in the best position in the novel. I put them on the table and used the plot as an anchor for the novel. I move and exchange ideas in a logical order until I am satisfied with the direction. Then, move the ideas of each chapter to the Excel spreadsheet according to the specified path. When November came, I was ready. I read a card the day before I left home, thought about this chapter when I drove to work, and wrote 1000 words on this topic in an hour’s lunch time. Sometimes I don’t want to write an article. “;” Big scene “; then continue another abnormal scene. These cards help me focus on one piece every day. If there is a main story line, I can write all the time for a month. Although I did not reach the goal of 50000 words of NaNoWrimo, I have a chance to exceed 25000 words. Years of writing and another novel Spoon Girl Through Spoon Girl, I now use the same method. I found that writing these chapters consecutively can avoid problems in later drafts.
Whether you use index cards to compose ideas, spreadsheets, digital recorders, and electronic devices(I have started using Scrivner), organizations can help you complete the arduous task of writing novels and even short stories. I don’t know how many ideas I will forget without writing first.
