Tag: plotting

Story Genius and Frozen 2: When the Story Doesn’t Match the Plot

As part of my winter writing goals, I’ve been reading Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Though it has its flaws (assuming that all stories are character driven instead of just most of them), I’m enjoying the thorough take on how to construct a character arc for your story before you start writing. My NaNo novel definitely suffered from a lack of planning in this department–I stalled out 1/3 of the way through because I had no idea how to pull the character out of her depressed funk. So I feel like the lessons learned in this book will be helpful in getting my next book going.

Story Genius also helped me with a problem that’s been rolling around in my head: why I don’t like Frozen 2. Ever since watching the movie over Thanksgiving, I’ve been wondering why a movie with such ostensibly powerful messages ended up feeling so hollow for me. I think Story Genius has given me the answer: what Frozen 2 wants to say, the story it wants to tell, isn’t backed up or earned by the plot that we see on screen. Sure, the songs are fantastic (you can’t fault Frozen on lyrics), and there are some great empowering one liners, but these end up falling flat because there is no substance behind them. It doesn’t come off as believable character growth, which means that it just comes off as a preach fest with lyrical interludes.

And so, without further ado, my attempt to fix the character arcs in Frozen:

Continue reading “Story Genius and Frozen 2: When the Story Doesn’t Match the Plot”

NaNo Prep 2019 Recap: Lessons of a First-Time Fiction Writer

  • World-building is hard. I almost wanted to give up and write a realistic novel because it would be so nice to just do some research and come up with a right answer. Deciding on details past the initial idea is super difficult, without relying too much on classic cliches. Kudos to all the scifi/fantasy writers who make this look effortless.
  • If you don’t like the way your book is going, you can change it! And the sooner you scrap what you don’t like, the more time you have to spend on what you do like. I had plotted out a whole war between three nations in my book. Then my book started morphing into a depressing war novel that I didn’t want to write. Saving that plot somewhere else and starting over was a great choice.
  • Plots require both internal and external action. After scrapping the war, I tried to re-outline my book and found that nothing was happening in it. My main character was still making internal progress because a lot of the plotting advice I was following focused on character arcs. But there was nothing to happen on screen while my character worked on her insecurities. I had to swing my planning away from character for a while to focus on having something happen.
  • Novel planning is a balance between planning and pantsing, even if you are otherwise a heavy planner. In other areas of my life, I have a spreadsheet for everything. After a few false starts with more organized plot methods, I ended up using the snowflake method to plot my book. And the steps where you expand the summary of your book (steps 2, 4, & 6) inevitably led me off in weird directions which turned into whole subplots of the book. The difference between plotters and pantsers is when they take these diversions, not if they take them.
  • Don’t give into the first hour anxiety. Everything you do looks terrible in that first hour because it’s hard to get back into it. Stick with it into the second hour and you’ll fall in love again.

Tomorrow is the big day! I’m terrified but excited.