Taking the wrong notes

[Yora]

I've been noticing for a while that all my notes are not very good. I come across a lot of stuff that I think is cool and inspiring and write it down, and sometimes I get a great idea for a concept and start working on an outline. But after a couple of day those outlines always start feeling boring, and when I look back at my various notes, the things I wrote down still seem cool, but I'm not really sure what stories to make with them. And then I'm back again to looking over my worldbuilding and character notes and can't really think of any good story I want to write.

I think the problem might actually be that I am taking the wrong notes. When I make a note for something, I write a creature, an environment, or a magical phenomenon from a scene that I found amazing. And when I look at those notes later, they sound cool, but they don't inspire me. I've been taking structural notes about concepts that I find intellectually interesting, but that's not really what I find inspiring when first encounter these things. The thing that gets me exited and inspired is the emotional content of the scene. Not the props, nor even the plot developments.
If I were writing spy thrillers or police procedurals, then plot and structure related notes might be useful. But what I am interested in creating for myself are wondrous and emotional journeys and into incomprehensible otherworlds. Of course some kind of internal consistency is required in these to be able to follow what is going on. But the notes I've been taking don't remind me of the things that would be useful and important for my writing.

Not quite sure how I would take notes for inspiring emotional situations. It probably can't be done with half sentences and might require more like a paragraph to capture the relevant information. But it really is something I've never been thinking about before. Just "taking notes" as regularly advised isn't enough. Your notes need to actually capture the inspiration of something, not just describe its surface appearance.

 

[Kalessin]

I've been struggling with this same thing, but my tentative conclusion is different. I think this is a case of clash between motivation (edit:discipline?) and inspiration. When I write the notes, my entire state of mind is different from when I read them, and that creates a kind of tension that is easy to despair about, or rather, my current position is that way and I need to address and overcome it. It seems to hurt my confidence itself when I'm first making the notes, and I end up a little detached from my own sense of meaning during future notes-sessions because I'm bracing myself for the disconnect.

Personally I think we should refrain from ruminating about the nature of the notes themselves. I mean, introspection is an ongoing and crucial thing, but to me, the notes-phase should retain a degree of spontaneity and a lack of self-consciousness. To what degree are you digging in your heels and writing when you don't feel a magical wind at your back? Maybe that's the crux.

 

[Devor]

It helps if you take a first principles approach. I'm going to grab the first example that comes to mind - world of warcraft's Cataclysm, where the dragon broke through the earth and scarred much of the planet (I stopped playing WoW during TBC, but the lore still interests me). Using that as inspiration isn't about writing "deathwing destroys azeroth" but "dragon breaks through the ground" or even "monster leaves a scar on the land." From here it becomes easier to picture something other than Deathwing and Azeroth. Maybe somebody shoots down a giant deity that scars the ground as it crashes. Maybe a minotaur skewers the inside of a mountain until the rocks change and a giant river dries up like a scar. Then you combine ideas. They shoot down a winged minotaur deity who crashes into the mountain, causing the mountain to fall in upon itself and skewer all the rivers coming from it. With each iteration you get farther and farther away from the original idea and into one of your own.

 

[Nirak]

I think it's good to keep notes of all kinds of things - interesting people you see, turns of phrase you hear, dreams you had, fragments of ideas - they can all be useful someday. If it's emotional impact that inspires you, though, what about seeing what emotional impact the item in your note might have? If your cool idea is "unicorn with laser horn", is the point of view from the unicorn, who could be a sort of Jedi of the forest, the last line of protection against the darkness; or maybe from the view of the villagers who fear it for the harm the horn causes - except for one brave girl who wants to capture one and use it to help protect the villagers from some evil. I agree with you, it can be really hard to take those cool ideas and make them into a story with the right plot, characters, and impact - but at least you know what it is that gets you interested!!! That's pretty awesome, and maybe you can use that to infuse your ideas with the emotional resonance that will help them take root for you.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Good notes can make or break continuity, but conflict = story. If you've got all this neat detail but no story, you need to ask yourself where your conflict is. Do you have enough? And do you have enough to be the engine of a novel/story? Conflict doesn't have to be hugely dramatic, but it does need to be consistently present, even if it's an inability for your character to find a decent cup of coffee.

 

[ThinkerX]

Strangely, I just posted a piece in 'Showcase' that had its origin in this topic. Rewriting the WIP takes up the bulk of my time, but I occasionally let myself dabble with short stories and notes for other projects.

One of these projects is a series of stories set on the 'Eldritch World,' a planet dominated by Lovecraftian entities. Over the past few days a few world-building notes and 'mental movie clips' converged into a story of sorts. As it was very short, I wrote it.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Conflict doesn't have to be hugely dramatic, but it does need to be consistently present, even if it's an inability for your character to find a decent cup of coffee.

I have once had a day in the office where we were all out of coffee. It turns out that the inability to find a decent cup of coffee actually is hugely dramatic...

It probably depends on what you want your notes to do. If it's keeping track of loose ideas about your world so when you sit down to write you've got some material to fill your world then it's fine if the notes feel bland. However, if you want your notes to inspire you to write something or as fuel for a writing session then you probably want to capture what inspires you. It might be a case of show, don't tell the image in your head...

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Coffee is life.

Personally, our notes serve to keep our three brains in sync during this long and detailed process. To say we're note-packrats would be an understatement. This is what one piece of one of our main character pages looks like. It helps to keep the details floating around in our brains in consensus so sudden eye color changes don't crop up.

We also use them to keep track of our outlines and when changes happen. What you see here is just a gist outline, the outline before the outline. (Yes, my wife outlines in drafts. You should see our grocery list.) Our final outlines more resemble a prewrite than anything else.

Long live OneNote.

 

[skip.knox]

A couple of thoughts here. First
>It probably can't be done with half sentences
I'm a believer in complete sentences. When I taught, I always urged my students to take notes in complete sentences. Subject, verb, object. Leave one out and you leave out crucial information. I would urge that doubly upon the novelist; after all, we deal in sentences, so we may as well practice the craft in the research phase. Take a look back through your notes and see if you aren't regularly leaving out the verb.

Second, if it's the emotional part you're after, then that's what you must capture. When you are taking the note, you are presumably feeling an emotion or two. Write whatever you need to write to do your best to evoke that emotion. A description, a snippet of dialog, a poem. Whatever. You aren't after descriptive detail so much as that wispy, trailing-fog sensation.

Finally, I agree with others about motivation and discipline and finishing. There may be other things at work here. The only way I exorcised the demon was to finish a story all the way through submitting it for publication. After I'd done that twice, I knew what finishing felt like. Starting is _easy_. Continuing is tough. To finish (and publish!) is to climb the mountain.

 

[Devor]

I'm going to drop a random excerpt from my notes here. This is a list of the little people fairy types, based on real folklore, which exist outside of my story's main region. (I chickened out from using any based on North American native cultures.)

Independant Vaki Groups
Anjana: Travelling, sprite-like, gift-giving
Polevik: Grass-haired field people
Zlydzens: Cat/dog mix, lives under stoves
Ar-/Bi-/Çor: Part fire, hidden in a town

Alux: Trap them in little houses after 7 yrs
Caipora: Deep forest beast masters
Kurupira: Red hair, back footed, outspread

Yumboes: Pearly white feasters, Papstwin Hill

A Tierna Alvone refugee returns with a few characters from Mt. Horai and maybe the above.

Immortals of {Mt. Horai}
Koro-pok-guru: Fishers, live in pits under leaves
Kijimuna: Red hair, mountain/tree jumpers, fishers
Yosei: Another word for Hobs

Defeat your pride to create enough seelie magic to open the gate for a day

^ My notes look like this, over twenty pages, in three columns.

I learned a long time ago that there are two kinds of notes. One where you dump the information from your brain, and you write it down so you don't have to remember it. And the other, which I've always sought to replicate, where you use the notes to help stimulate the content in your brain.

I don't use complete sentences. I barely use complete thoughts. But a few words, in my notes, triggers all sorts of information from my head about the topic. My mind fills in the gaps, which leads me to know the material better.

These kinds of notes have worked for me extremely well since High School, and I can still look at a few words in twenty year old notes and then tell you quite a bit about the topic.

 

[oenanthe]

I've been noticing for a while that all my notes are not very good. I come across a lot of stuff that I think is cool and inspiring and write it down, and sometimes I get a great idea for a concept and start working on an outline. But after a couple of day those outlines always start feeling boring, and when I look back at my various notes, the things I wrote down still seem cool, but I'm not really sure what stories to make with them. And then I'm back again to looking over my worldbuilding and character notes and can't really think of any good story I want to write.

It sounds like trying to take an idea and turn it into a plot outline before you've developed the story. I think that's a common thing to do, and that taking an idea and turning it into a story is complex and personal. I can't tell you how to do it, but I can tell you how I do it, and that might spark some ideas.

But first I need an idea. Hmm. maybe a prompt.

You stand accused of killing the Queen. The only person who can vouch for you is her ghost. No one can see her.​

okay, that's a decent idea. maybe a little more coherent than my usual middle of the night scribbling, but it'll do.

The first thing I do is I try out a bunch of scenes that encompasses the prompt. like, I tried a room full of people accusing my MC of killing the queen, and the ghost is there, telling my MC what to say to refute arguments, and the MC is also trying to hide that they can see/hear a ghost because that's bad for some reason.

But I discarded that, because it's terribly static. so I came up with the next thing. My MC can't sleep, and is in their room in the palace reading something instead - maybe a book, maybe some letters, or a report, or an accounting ledger, I don't know what, and then the room gets colder, even though it's heated, and then the queen walks through the wall looking all transparent, says, "you have to escape. they're coming."

And that's how my MC winds up hiding on a rooftop on a windy, frosty night, trying to escape arrest for regicide, while the queen acts as a scout/lookout trying to find a way to get past the guards and into the city.

and you know what, I like that idea a lot better than a bunch of people sitting in a room, talking.

So I write that down, and I free associate a little, trying to answer questions my visualized scene have popped up for me, like historical period and technology level, but also who did kill the queen, why did they do it (is it connected to the thing my MC was reading? ooh that's cool hang on to that) how did the queen know to come to the MC and save them, what does the queen-ghost want, why is it that only the MC can see the queen, hold on-- what kind of story is it?

Now that question is super important. because the first idea, the MC in a room being accused, that's kind of static, which is why I threw it away and moved on to escaping with nothing but the clothes on the MC's back in treacherous conditions... and if that's how my story opens, that suggests an action oriented story, where the MC is going to have to hide, impersonate, escape, fight, break in, all that. so I start thinking about possibilities where my character is in action, because my natural tendency is people sitting in a room talking. A chase scene in crowded city streets isn't where I think first. so I'm going to need to think of defining action scenes to use in the book. I want five to ten at least.

But I also need emotional turning points and big moments, so I think about emotions I want my MC to feel in the story: horrified realization, betrayal, the moment where all is dark--but there's a glimmer of hope to lead the way out, a moment to relax and feel safe, anger--no, wrath, the anxiety that accompanies an impossible choice, a moment where the MC sacrifices something valuable to them--or self-sacrifice, etc. i try to think about situations in this story where my MC could feel these feelings. maybe some of them go with my action scenes, maybe some of them are separate.

Now I'm sketching out some scenes, not in any order, just following what excites me and what feels cool. I might not be able to use all of these scenes, but I'm going to fight to get them in. Characters will pop up while I'm figuring out my essential scenes. i'll think about them too.

and somewhere in there, i find the MC's goal - does my MC want to expose the real murderer and clear their name? that might be how the story starts: "I have to prove it wasn't me" but then there's two plot structure points I need to think about:

is there a twist in the middle of the book that changes the whole game?
what is the final confrontation?
​

That's two more scenes to think about, and those could be connected to my emotional moments and/or my action scenes

this is how I start my novel notebook. it's scattered and random and i'm just writing down the stuff that excites me. if I start to trail off or get bored in one area, it's time to drop that for now and say, "what else is interesting?" I let this scattered jumping around go on over multiple sessions until i naturally start thinking, I need to organize this.

okay. NOW I'm ready to outline.