Tonight was our first regional Nano-prep session. The topic was Plotting. Fortunately we just talked about what we were doing and no plotting.

So I was thinking earlier, how do you make story without planning it out beforehand? There are some questions I use consciously or unconsciously. Starting with the basic:

What’s stopping them from reaching their goal? How do they overcome it? How does this complicate matters?

Then:
What can you do now to make things harder for them?

Then:
What’s the worse thing that could happen now? Do it!

So, really it’s just the same sort of questions you’d ask if you’re outlining beforehand, but you ask them while you’re typing. With the added bonus that if you start in a particular direction, you’re committed to it. Which is the advantage of making it up as you go. If I’m laying down a lot of words quickly and need to come up with SOMETHING ANYTHING to write next, the story goes in more interesting directions than if I’d stopped to think about it. It’s really dipping into the creative well.

(Loot from our Nano prep session tonight, plus licorice ice cream fingerprints. Also, have I mentioned how much I like the idea of not having to do ML things none of them not at all this year?)

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