Plotting the second book.

[Robert Donnell]

Well I had my first English class (Composition I) That I had been to in years last night. I had fun by the way. I spoke to my instructor and she was a cookie cutter type of writer. She suggested establishing a format and filling in the blanks. Yeah I bet reading her books will really keep her readers awake. My style is more narrative, I am just looking for a deliberate structure before getting to my second book, but not quite that bad.

I can't complain too badly at least she pushed pre-writing and coherence. Those are ideas I do like.

 

[SeverinR]

It is difficult to write what you don't understand or agree with.
So politically it would be difficult for a left idealist to write a believable right ideology, or vice versa.
You can promote the stereotypical shortcomings of the ideology, but if not careful, it becomes a political rant rather then a
entertaining book.

Politics is not a one deminsional train of thought, on most issues there is a tree ring of beliefs, and some are vastly different on some topics compared to another. Tree ring; belief just slightly off center(the inner rings) or clearly extreme radius of a belief(the outer edge)

One word of warning,
When you segragate your consumers, you create a divide making a group of people that definately won't buy your book. You essentially create a foe list. That author is a left wing/right wing hack, don't read him/her.
Some authors thrive on the political divide(many best sellers), but in a specific genre like fantasy, do you really want to allienate half of the readers?
Better to hint at politics, then to take it head on. Make it an isolated political event, rather then an assualt on a group of readers.

 

[SeverinR]

Well I had my first English class (Composition I) That I had been to in years last night. I had fun by the way. I spoke to my instructor and she was a cookie cutter type of writer. She suggested establishing a format and filling in the blanks. Yeah I bet reading her books will really keep her readers awake. My style is more narrative, I am just looking for a deliberate structure before getting to my second book, but not quite that bad.

I can't complain too badly at least she pushed pre-writing and coherence. Those are ideas I do like.

The way of a master, is to find what works and use it, what doesn't and avoid it, what works for others might not work for you, what works for you might not work for anyone else.
The student does not follow in lock step, eating up what the teacher dishes out, but to integrate the lesson into what you know.
Unless your instructor is a frequent best seller writer, it is pretty easy to assume they haven't found the perfect path to writing.

Knowing what is proper does not automatically equal, what is entertaining.

 

[Robert Donnell]

Oh I agree with you, as far as the politics in writing go we saw in real life WWII that fuel and supplies were diverted from Patton to Montgomery for political reasons but in books about say King Author you rarely see this discussed. Lancelot getting the good horses but Sir Perceval just gets the nags.

Today it seems to be a common tactic when you are losing an argument to someone who is logical, well-reasoned and articulate to just call them a racist. It is called playing the race card. I plan on using this tactic to ridicule it.

I have been thinking about how to structure this story but...

So ideas that I have in mind to use in the story are:

A. The bad guys have slaves who are mostly innocent, must be saved.
B. The bad guys are asking for help, we must help.
C. The bad guys will undoubtedly stab us in the back, we fear.
D. The protagonist knows this.
E. Every course of action is going to end up badly.
F. The protagonist must chart a course that ends up with the least dead.
G. This is done by manipulation of people to get them to the best thing for the worst reasons.
H. This will negatively affect the Protagonist and his family.
I. I want a side story that will make the reader wonder ultimately whether the main story is moot, nail biter gosh is this all for naught?
J. Murder, backstabbing, betrayal, halitosis, the whole nine yards.

So I can just wing it but I find that this makes for a sloppy story with lots of loose ends. A more structured approach, I hope, will get rid of the loose ends but I fear may make the story dull to read. I am still looking for a How to structure my book without over structuring it. Does that make sense?

 

[ShortHair]

True art is starting with a real-world situation, drawn from the here and now, and generalizing it so that everyone can learn something from it. You want to bash liberals, fine. You want to write a good book, think about why liberals do the things they do, otherwise those characters come across as straw men. "Playing the race card," for instance, is something everyone does, and it happens when they give up on an argument.

Laying out the structure of a story isn't cut and dried. Different methods work for different people. You'll have to find a strategy that works for you. Some people just start writing with no outline, nothing. Some need character dossiers, maps, schedules, storyboards, everything. You'll probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Start with what you have. Make a list of what you need. Decide how to get from here to there. Without seeing how you work, that's all I can give you.

 

[Robert Donnell]

I am still in the pre-writing stage. Somewhere in the next few days I will start the foundation, I need some idea what it is to look like before I pour the foundation.

 

[Lawfire]

There are a number of people that are paid great sums of money to think (write) like the members of various other political ideologies. It may be hard to write believably about things one does not understand, but just because one does not agree with something does not mean he or she does not understand it. It also does not mean one cannot understand why others do believe it.