Okay, I choked. Not a single idea for the story. I know, I'll do some free writing. Disaster. I couldn't connect a noun with a verb if my life depended.
Time to change strategy. If I am going to write another novel, I want to avoid some of the manuscript management problems I had with The Marathon Watch; keeping versions straight and moving stuff around etc. In other words, I wanted to find a way to put off the outlining and character development while wasting time in the name of working on my next novel. I decided to look at tools to help me manage my manuscript and Voilà I found two potential software tools that not only helped manage the manuscript but would also help develop outlines.
The first was scrivener. A great tool for novel development. It allows you to manage multiple versions of each scene, move things around and keep everything straight. It even lets you organize and keep your research and bible inside scrivener so you don't have post-it notes, paper and binders all over your desk.
The second was Dramatica. The intriguing thing about Dramatica is that it comes with a large manual that describes the physiological theory of "The Story." With it, the author claims, you can create complete stories that support your theme and leave your readers with a sense of closure and completeness. I am naturally curious and am always looking for things to learn. Learning the theory (while putting off the inevitable) seemed like it was going to be fun.
The problem was the poorly written manual uses terms a physiologist would use, but not a writer. Despite the insistence on using the strange vocabulary, the author uses supposedly precise terms inconsistently leaving the reader wondering what was being said. The biggest complaint I had against the manual is that it did not go from the general to the specific, or from the known to the unknown, it started at the ultra-specific level without context and then kept piling it on. I struggled mightily to decipher the manual and failed. To put this in perspective, when I was in college I solved third-order differential equations in my head while driving to keep my mind occupied.
Fear not. I am fearless. All I need is some practical experience and it will all come together. Time to dive into the software tool that implements the theory for the author. And, I reasoned, it would get me started on the outlining and other prep work that needed to get done. Ouch!
The dive in quickly turned into a painful cyber-header. As I struggled to use Dramatica software, I found that it broke the story elements down into extremely fine detail with no way to pull it back together. Very quickly I developed hundreds of Dramatica elements for my story, but had completely lost track of where I was or where I was going. I did learn a great deal from Dramatica in terms of character structure, outlining and ways to build a novel bible so the effort wasn't totally lost. In short, Dramatica seemed to hold great promise, but failed me miserably as a tool and as a theory. I abandoned Dramatica.
Well, that was fun and I managed to waste almost two months. What I had to show for it was a rough outline of plot, a muddy idea of theme, and pieces of the novel bible. I guess it was time to get to work.
Well, almost . . .
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