Monthly Archives: October 2009

Premise Lines

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I’ve been following the awesome Alexandra Sokoloff‘s pre-Nanowrimo workshop on her blog. If you haven’t checked her out yet, do. She’s got tons of great information on her blog, especially if you are a plotter. So far, we’ve made a list of ten movies that are somehow related to our Nanowrimo ideas, and we are now writing premise lines for all 10 of those movies. I just finished mine, so I thought I’d post them here. I used Netflix to get me going, so some of these are lifted almost word-for-word from Netflix because they were really good! (Others from Netflix were awful and I pretty much had to start from scratch.) So, here are my master list and premise lines. (See if you can figure out what I might be working on for Nanowrimo!)

The Time Machine (1960 film)
Image via Wikipedia

1. The Time Machine (1960)

On the eve of the 20th century, December 31, 1899, a scientist invents a time machine that allows him to travel to the distant future, which he hopes will be a peaceful utopia, only to find that earth’s future harbors a more sinister evil than he could have imagined.

1b. The Time Machine (2002)– This one’s a bonus because I felt like I should do a different one for each movie, since the motivations were so different. Continue reading →

A Plotter’s Guide to Pantsing

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Noveling
Image by Sonja_the_strange via Flickr

In the fiction writing world, we tend to divide ourselves up into two distinct groups: the plotters and the pantsers. The plotters, well, plot. They outline, they plan, they do all the anal-retentive things you might expect. The pantsers write by the seat of their pants, hence the term. They often say, “If I know how the book ends, I’m not interested in writing it anymore.”

Nanowrimo cometh. Inherently, Nanowrimo tends to foster the pantsing school of thought. Chris Baty’s guide to all things Nanowrimo is even called No Plot? No Problem! It’s a great book, and pantsing really does work for some people… but not all of us.

I am, by nature, a plotter. I plan pretty much every aspect of my life, including what I write. That’s not to say that everything always goes according to plan, but I’m paralyzed without some idea of where to go and what to do. So how do I swing Nanowrimo?

Continue reading →