Guardians: Angellus Journals: 6
Seth wanted to know how to take a great character or concept and expand them into a fully fledged plot. Kimi shares a little about how she created Guardians and then explains her method for creating a cohesive plot.
Send in your question for next weeks Angellus Journal in the comments or call 201.860.1586
4 Responses to “Guardians: Angellus Journals: 6”
April 14th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Thanks Kimi! This is really helpful. I’m also looking into taking Holly Lisle’s online course.
April 16th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
On the question of how to expand your plot or plots falling on its face after a couple chapters, One thing that has helped me is to know how it ends. What is the big climax or what is the big resolution? Once you have that then you ask your self what needs to happen to make this possible. It’s a kind of reverse engineering that helped me add scenes to the novel I’m dabbling in. It also helped me know if i need any extra characters that i hadn’t thought of yet to make the plot work. I hope this helps out.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
To build a plot you need two very important things:
1) Your characters have to want something
2) You need a conflict
Your story happens when the two collide. In other words when something happens that gets in the way of what your main character wants (and this includes messing up a life they were happy with), that’s when things begin to happen – and keep happening until the issues is resolved (happily or unhappily).
Holly Lisle has excellent worksheets to help you figure out these additional dimensions of your characters and the sorts of typical conflicts that you can use as a starting point. I highly recommend looking at her available articles and maybe doing a course if you can manage the $ and the time.
Good luck Seth!
May 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am
I love the idea of “candy bar scenes.”