WriYe - Planning part 2

The bonus challenge: Show us a screenshot, picture, or draw us something that represents you planning! So for you pantsers, I expect some funny stuff.

Okay, so here's a screenshot of my latest work in progress. (I don't usually write with this many pages on view, but I wanted to show all the different things I do.)

The different parts are colour coded; black is the story I've written so far, red is bits that are ideas that need fleshing out, blue is background research and purple is a list of characters with very short descriptions. I keep my longer character profiles in a different file.

I often have pictures in my documents while I'm writing as well to give me ideas and help me keep an ideas of who my character is in my head. In this case I'd been writing about Martha Pemberton, the heroine of a story set in the Regency period.

WriYe planning part 1

WriYe - Planning part 1

What's your favorite planning method? Do you prefer to plot by hand or use the computer? What part of planning do you hate the absolute most? Or do you hate all of planning and you'd rather pants your novels? Why?

Sometimes I will go off without a master plan... Actually quite often I go off without a master plan... But usually I'll have some sort of plan even if it's just a very basic outline of a character and a challenge for them to overcome.

I actually really enjoy the planning stage and find that because of the way I go about it, it usually merges very easily into the writing of the story. I don't usually use paper notes and I haven't really got my head around the specialist story-writing software, so most of my planning is done in Word, which is where I write the vast majority of my stories. I start with an idea, then flesh that out a bit, then take each bit of that and flesh that out, and usually while I'm doing that I'll write one or two scenes that jump out at me. When I'm developing characters I usually find myself writing a scene as well so that I get their voice fixed in my head. The scene might not make it into the finished story, but quite often at least some bits of it do.

So the short answer is I love planning, there's nothing about it I hate, and although sometimes I do pants it, I'm much more of a planner.

WriYe - Planning part 2

WriYe - Seasonal stories

Everyone has their favorite: the heat of summer, the beauty of spring, the cool winds of autumn or the quiet frozen landscapes of winter. And because we have our favorite, we most likely have a set of favorite things we do during those seasons. But how does that affect your writing? Do you write more during your favorite season, or do you prefer to do things that are not related to writing?


I love autumn - swishing leaves, the gorgeous colours,seeing the sunrise without having to get up at silly o'clock, the crispness in the air without it being too cold, and the excuse to wear boots with skirts! I love winter, too, especially when it has been or is snowing. There's something about frosty mornings that's very exciting, and noticing that the light coming through the curtains is just that bit brighter than usual, hinting that just maybe it's snowed overnight. But I think, just about, that my favourite season is autumn.

I like writing about autumn as well, and I find that most of my favourite scenes that I write are set in autumn, although that's only something I realised when I was thinking about seasons to write this blog post.

I don't know if I write more in the autumn - I think I tend to write most in the winter, but that may be because of NaNoWriMo acting as an incentive. The rest of the year my writing seems to plod along quite steadily with increased spurts of activity if I start something that really catches my imagination.