Outlines and Maps

Update 44 April 4-10 2022

I realize many things.

First off, this blog could be pretty boring for a while. I think the writing updates are a lot more interesting, but I’m going to play with the format and what we talk about and try to be entertaining (and still informative).

Secondly, I’m having some struggles with this book. Many troubles.

But we’ll get to that in a minute. This blog is going to half be about outlining, and planning, the other half will probably be about gaming or toku. I hope that these are interesting topics? Last week did see an upswing in interest. So, just stick with me and in another few weeks we’ll get started on the next manuscript.

Previous Manuscripts

My thesis novel (Ashlands) is still being read by a friend and I’m awaiting feedback. I might have another 2-3 people interested in reading as well. I’m hoping that happens, as the more feedback the better I can make the book.

Invasion 1 book (these are just codenames) is sitting and waiting. This was advice from a ton of other writers (including King) to let the manuscript sit for a month and then come back to it with fresh eyes. I am planning to do a full read through and clean up last week of April or first of May.

Once I’ve done and overall clean-up of the manuscript, I will look into pre-readers again and see if I can get some feedback. I’m aiming for the last week of April so that I can start Invasion 2.

Outlining Problems

Let’s admit that the problem is my own laziness. I am enjoying the time away from the keys and I keep finding other things to take my attention. I have watched a lot of 70’s era Sentai, and I recently picked up a Nintendo Switch and before that I was dusting off older games to play. My birthday is very soon and I will be getting more games for the Switch, and I think you can see where this is going.

That said… MANY of my favorite authors/ friends are also avid gamers and they still get in their writing time. So, using their example I will get my scheduling sorted. The only problem really is the outline fighting me.

And it is fighting me. I keep finding tangents to work on. Different things that just “must be done BEFORE I can get the outline flowing.”

So far, my “to do” list included making a timeline of all events in the first book so that I can line up events in this book. I need to draw new versions of the maps of all of the areas and a basic overview of the continent as a whole. I need to change the main characters. If I change the main characters I should sit on the internet and cast them with pics like I did for Ashlands (but didn’t do for Invasion 1, sigh).

Speed Bumps

To handle this list, I have so far created that timeline and then I gathered up a bunch of the older maps I drew of this world to figure out how I want to adapt them to this iteration of the world and these stories.

If that last sentence doesn’t make sense, I direct you to THIS blog wherein I talk about the genesis of this world and all of the iterations. The mapping is daunting, and just like my writing I often like to leave it only partially outlined (sketched) so that I can adapt and make things up on the spot. But at the same time, I am and obsessive who literally scales their maps to figure out travel time. And then realize that due to the scale of things I have erred either too large or too small. And it messes everything up. I also tend to not like changing all of the details in my outline or map, and try to stick with the parts that are written and only pantsing the parts that are left blank.

This is an eternal struggle for me. I will often plot/outline projects months, if not years, before I get around to writing them, and then argue that Past-Me might have been smarter than Present-Me, and I should check out what HE wrote before I make new stuff up.

Writing Anecdote:

Which actually brings us to a funny story.

I tend to write notes and outlines in notebooks, or on random sheets of paper that I then collate into a folder. So, when I sit down to write the novel, I have 2-3 notebooks full of outline, character sketches, tiny maps, drawings of objects/monsters/buildings, etc.

While writing Ashlands I didn’t realize that I had put about 30 pages of notes into an extra notebook in my backpack. I think I wanted to outline stuff while at work and I had forgot to pack my main notebook, so I just wrote stuff in a fresh one.

Well, I discovered this notebook more than halfway through the manuscript and I had written up the back ground for this villain group. I named all the members of the group, gave them a complete history, sketched out their features, and wrote up notes for their base and what they were doing. I had all of their individual goals and wants figured out, who liked who and who was about to back stab one of the others. Everything.

As I said, I discovered this halfway through the writing process, and these villains were from that FIRST half. When I got tot them in my outline, I had their origin and what they were up to and how they interacted with my heroes. But none of these other details. I wrote that whole section, thought it was pretty good, if not a little rushed and moved on.

But when I found that notebook and read all the details I had in there…. That was WAY BETTER. Sigh.

And for context, I had first planned the Ashlands more than a decade ago, and I started outlining in 2014/15. I even started to write it but then stopped and in 2017 I was in college again and decided to push for the MFA program. So, I delayed and re-outlined over three years and then started the book as my thesis. So, I had notebooks from all of those eras.

Back on Track

This week accomplished very little other than making a timeline which took a whole day as I had to open up my 200k novel and go chapter by chapter and find all the references to travel time, days spent doing little, and all of that.

At the least I have now determined that I will open a calendar and add those details while I write from now on. So we will have a living timeline that grows with each book. And knowing me I will make a whole day of creating that calendar as a Word file or somesuch.

Not exactly riveting content.

Entertainment

I do have a bunch of other things I could talk about.

This was the rare three game session week I get in a month. The monthly Curse of Strahd game happened. There wasn’t a whole lot to it. We traveled from a small town to a camp where I seer read our future in a deck of cards. Along the way we had a fight with some wolves and a hellhound. It was interesting and I’m only sad that the game only meets once a month. At the rate we’re going it might take 2-3 years to get near the end.

My Saturday game was also Curse of Strahd, and after the near total death last week, it went much smoother this week. We were raised from the dead, by the same card reading seer from the other game. But as payment we needed to save Madam Eva’s granddaughter, and we now had targets painted on our backs. We left the camp, fought some twisted woodland creatures and saved the granddaughter from being drowned in a lake. It was a good time.

My other game of the week is locked in a large dungeon crawl, but the fun of how that DM runs his dungeons is that they are all mysteries. We uncover the history of his world, and its usually hidden history, or prior epoch, lost civilization type things. So, his dungeons are a mix of combats, tricks/traps, and learning history (with a dash of solving mysteries). I have always loved getting all of the world building through these ancient ruins.

Toku

Moving away from gaming, otherwise I will start talking video games and the JRPGs I just recently piled up… which will then go into the (literally) hundreds of hours of gaming that is piling up as games arrive.

Toku.

I love it. Unabashedly.

The seventies era of Sentai and all I can say is it is batshit crazy. I really, really, want to talk about it. I have even thought up some essays or blogs I could write about all of the details. Really, I’m just watching it to see how certain tropes were established and then how they evolved and changed. I have only one friend who is a real fan of the stuff, and I kind of feel like I might become a nuisance if I just constantly text her. Ha.

Just so much weird stuff. For example, all of the women rangers in the first three series have western names. Gorangers has Peggy, JAQK has Karen, and Battle Fever J has Diane/ Maria. That seems weird to me, since all of the men have traditional Japanese names, including the ones in Battle Fever J where all of the characters are from around the world. In that one it makes sense that the women who were raised in the USA have western names, but the guy who lived most of his life in Africa and was trained there is Shiro, and the guy who lived in South America and was a Gaucho is Makoto Jin.

But anyway, I don’t intend for this site to devolve into my love for Toku in anything other than an anecdote. Perhaps I will just include a single fact in each blog going forward for a while. I’ll start yet another notebook.

Outro

Well, thank you if you lasted this long. I’m sure this site is starting to get a little weird, but this site is about ME and I am a little weird. Thank you again, and see you next week.