{"id":136,"date":"2013-07-19T21:58:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T21:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=136"},"modified":"2013-07-19T21:58:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T21:58:57","slug":"when-inspiration-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"When inspiration strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I plan out a novel, I plan in broad strokes. Before I start writing, I usually know where the story starts, where it ends, who the characters are, and all of the major incidents or locations along the way. There are some exceptions – when I was writing The Chimney Rabbit<\/em>, the whole sequence with Captain Sock and the pirate ship the Salty Dog<\/em> came to me just as Giovanni and Pezzley were drifting out to sea. In the end, that detour ran to four chapters and about 14,000 words, a significant proportion of the book. It’s also one of my favourite sections, and now I can’t imagine the story without it – Captain Sock and the Salty Dog<\/em> have had wide-ranging repercussions not just for The Chimney Rabbit<\/em> but also for the sequel, and even the prequel.<\/p>\n

But in general, when I start to write, I have all the locations and events planned at a high level. What I don’t do is plan the details. My plan will have something like “Protagonist comes up with escape plan”, but it’s only when I actually come to write that chapter that I flesh out the plan with details like “Protagonist steals a teaspoon and digs a tunnel”. I find that doing things this way helps me keep the writing process fresh, and lets me react to how the story and characters have developed.<\/p>\n

So when I’m coming up to one of these unresolved, fuzzy plot points, as I am at the moment with Tales of the Ancient Rabbits<\/em>, it’s quite often a matter of slowing down, stopping thinking directly about the story, and waiting for inspiration to strike. If inspiration doesn’t<\/em> strike, I can just write through the situation – I can come up with some<\/em> mechanism to resolve the plot, even if it isn’t quite as dramatic or thrilling as I intended – but it’s so much nicer when an idea pops into my head for how to get things moving in a neat and stylish fashion.<\/p>\n

With my current plot point, I’ve got an issue where I want my protagonist to get past an obstacle through some sort of ruse rather than unrealistically and violently punching his way through – I’ve already had him solve a problem with his fists, and he’s starting to come to the realisation that there are other solutions, and this is a character trait I really want to develop. On the other hand, it would be really<\/em> handy if someone could get punched right at this point! So I was particularly pleased when the solution came to me as I was driving home from work this evening – the protagonist’s clever deception, followed by someone else<\/em> doing the punching. And it just worked – it got past the obstacle, it allowed my protagonist to develop, and it also provided more conflict and intrigue with the person who does the actual punching.<\/p>\n

Friday nights are blog nights, not writing nights, but as soon as I got home, I wrote down my ideas in Evernote so\u00a0 I wouldn’t forget. The only thing worse than inspiration not striking would be inspiration striking, then forgetting it before you managed to get it down on paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I plan out a novel, I plan in broad strokes. Before I start writing, I usually know where the story starts, where it ends, who the characters are, and all of the major incidents or locations along the way. There are some exceptions – when I was writing The Chimney Rabbit, the whole sequence… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-2c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}