I’ve not been writing much here because — well, I haven’t been writing much. Which, all justifications and rationales aside, is my own failing. Thinking about writing a lot, mind you, and already anticipating NaNoWriMo, but actual writing? Not so much.

I seem to need some external goad to write — a framework, a group, an assignment, a deadline.  Thus, NaNoWriMo, but, thus, also an writing group that De Knippling put together to try out some plotting ideas she had.

There were five of us, in the final equation, and we sat down over a couple of evenings (WedNights down at the Castle Rock Library) and hashed out an overall plot, scene by scene, with the opening setting, what is being tried, what the succeed (with more dire consequences to follow) or fail (ditto) is, and how the scene closes. Oh, we defined the characters, at least briefly, and the basic idea of the story and so forth, but the main thing was that scene-by-scene plotting.

Then each of us would take a scene and kick it out over the next couple of hours.  Which was fairly easy-peasey.

Result?  Well, it’s not a great story, at least as we left it — some major tone, not to mention narrative, disconnects, even if we read each others contributions in the week before.  Not enough up-front (or top-down) planning, and no edit cycles.  We’ve decided to leave it as-is, because (a) we’ve gotten from it what we wanted, and (b) nobody has the time or vigorous motivation to do the editing that it would need to take it to any further level.

A fun effort, though, and one of the first times I’ve participated in this sort of thing.  I look forward to the next group exercise being planned.