Late to the Kay Kenyon Ball

[akirlu]

...but as an aide memoire for myself, here's a link to avocadovpx's explanation of Kay Kenyon's technique for 'storyboarding' scenes for fiction. Pointer thanks to athenais.

Yesterday a shard of dream on the bus home made me want to write an urban fantasy about the magical hidden city-within-the-city and the Travelers who are its inhabitants. It's just a fragment, yet, but it's a writery thing bubbling up.

Comments

Oh, do!

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

It sounds nice.

Re: Oh, do!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks for encouragement! Though, if I do it right, 'nice' is probably not in it. Darker and grittier, I think. Somewhere on the DeLint-Gaiman spectrum, maybe.

I'm doing something similar to this right now

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

I am currently working on a story workbook; with characters, settings, an action outline, and a scene outline for my Clarion West Write-A-Thon, uh, 'thoning' thing. Among other things I am using parts of the Dramatica method to help determine character roles and influences.

You can do this kind of thing with anything from expensive computer programs to packs of 3x5 cards. I'm using Google Notebook so I can experiment with it. Altogether it is probably too much analysis and too little fictionalizing, but this is for a longer work and I do have issues keeping everything in my head for that kind of thing.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I never get writing ideas on public transport. I tend to have long conversations in my head with people who in real life wouldn't sit still for the catalog of their sins.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Regardless of where I am, the need to have long conversations in my head with people who wouldn't otherwise sit still for the catalog of their sins tends to drive out the fictive urge. I have no solution for that, other than recognizing that my fit of ire will pass, and then I can have my head back for writing stories. Maybe I should work on writing the people who need a talking to as characters. At least it's writing, and besides, then I can cause them interesting and detailed sufferings at will.

Re: I'm doing something similar to this right now

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

If outlining (or researching, or whatever) is a delaying tactic, then it's probably not a good thing. But if you need tools to help organize and structure your writing, by all means use the tools!

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Drugs are effective in helping me to avoid those long conversations in my head with people I really shouldn't be bothering about. Instead I dictate long LJ posts to myself on my walks. But then other stuff happens and I seldom write them down. Even if I take paper and make notes, they have lost some necessary immediacy by the time I get to the keyboard.

It's not much of an excuse, so I will have to do better.