x_erikah_x (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
x_erikah_x) wrote2009-02-06 12:42 pm
x_erikah_x) wrote2009-02-06 12:42 pm
Entry tags:
Clustering
This last month was the best writing month I ever had. It was so challenging and in more than one occasion I thought I would fail. But I succeeded, much to my own surprise, and learned so much about writing I can't even begin to describe.
I often complained about having a lazy muse. The plot bunnies aren't so lazy, but all they do is give ideas to the lazy muse that refuses to follow them to a logical conclusion. What to do then? Well, I gave myself a challenge because I know I can't refuse a challenge that I set for myself. I'm too much of a perfectionist to allow myself to fail. I have always liked writing drabbles. I discovered that they are my strength. I thought that if I perfected my own technique to write them, I would have some insight on writing longer fics. It worked.
The thing is that the epiphany only came in the very end of it. But at least it came. I found out that my greatest weakness is outlining the story and brainstorming ideas. I may have one good idea, but it doesn't multiply or go forward. It only stands still. Eventually the idea fades and I'm left with nothing but a beginning of a story that can't work. Once I found out what I needed to improve, I started working on it. When I worked on it by myself, it was a complete disaster. So, I went to Google.
The first page I visited had a list of several techniques to outline a plot and generate more ideas. Most of them were completely useless to me because I had already tried them in the past and had little results, but they offered some insight so I could continue researching. The second page was gold. It had a little power point presentation that sparkled me. It was such a silly thing to try that it made me feel utterly dumb and stupid for never having tried it. I had heard of it, but never payed any attention to it, thinking it was just another stupid idea. Anyway, the presentation is in this page. Just scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page. It also has a link to another page that was also very useful to me.
The part of that idea that got to me was that I know that I can't outline following a logical order. Still, I hate writing chunks and pieces out of order, especially without an outline. It was like a roadblock. The technique that ended this debate is called clustering. The theory is that the brain has two ways of processing information. You can use the left or the right side of the brain. With the left, you think linearly, one step at a time (what I was doing before). With the right side, you think in patterns, emotionally, you create connections and images, in a more complex way and the story suddenly flashes to your mind as a whole. That's what I wanted to achieve.
Basically, using clustering I can write any story of any length I want, out of thin air. And you can do as many clusterings as you want in the same story. Then I will use the logical side to organize the ideas and sequence the story. A combination of both.
For those who don't know how the technique works and are too lazy to download the presentation in the site:
The first thing you need is a piece of blank paper. Write a base word in the center and circle it.
Now, write everything that comes to your mind afterwards. It doesn't matter how connected it is, how ridiculous, how remote, silly, or how difficult it is. It can be words, phrases, dialog, elements, literally anything. Connect these words to the first using arrows. In the beginning they will have little connection to each other and they'll be just words. As you continue, ideas start to flow and you will either end up concentrating in one aspect and ignoring the others, or connecting everything amongst each other in a intricate plot. Follow this with the new balloons, creating branches, interconnecting ideas, and using the paper you have. Don't stop until the page is full.
Example:
Base word is blood. From this I had three balloons: gunshot wound (whumper here, lol), ATA gene and family relations.
From family I had two balloons: Dave and Patrick Sheppard.
From gunshot I got enemy and from Dave I came with Earth.
Then I connected enemy with Earth and had The Trust. From Trust came kidnapping. I also connected ATA with Dave, because he's likely to have it. I wrote that down and connected it to kidnapping. From kidnapping I generated a whole branch for the emotional side, and even had thoughts and dialog written down. I also generated another branch for the technical aspect, how many people, where, how, etc. I generated another branch for rescue. You can see that now I was totally absorbed in the clustering of ideas and in a matter of minutes a whole A4 page was so full I had to turn it to the other side to continue. And just five minutes before I had no idea where the fic would go.
When I finished it, I broke everything down into scenes. Instead of using new clusterings for each scene, I outlined it the old fashioned way, because it was just a short fic. For a longer one, you can generate one clustering for the whole story, then one for each chapter. So, a ten chapter story will have eleven clusterings. In the end, break everything down and sequence the ideas. Then you write it.
The page from Gabriele Rico has some examples with images.
This is an example I made for the story from the prompt Awareness:
Anyway, this ended up a long ramble, but I hope it can help someone as much as it helped me. It brought back my motivation to write and now that's all I think about the whole day. I'm thinking about expanding personal challenges as a way to keep me working on new ideas. The secret is to find out what works better for you.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kristen999 also posted about how she likes to outline and write long fics, and I would like to know what works for the other writers from my f-list.
I often complained about having a lazy muse. The plot bunnies aren't so lazy, but all they do is give ideas to the lazy muse that refuses to follow them to a logical conclusion. What to do then? Well, I gave myself a challenge because I know I can't refuse a challenge that I set for myself. I'm too much of a perfectionist to allow myself to fail. I have always liked writing drabbles. I discovered that they are my strength. I thought that if I perfected my own technique to write them, I would have some insight on writing longer fics. It worked.
The thing is that the epiphany only came in the very end of it. But at least it came. I found out that my greatest weakness is outlining the story and brainstorming ideas. I may have one good idea, but it doesn't multiply or go forward. It only stands still. Eventually the idea fades and I'm left with nothing but a beginning of a story that can't work. Once I found out what I needed to improve, I started working on it. When I worked on it by myself, it was a complete disaster. So, I went to Google.
The first page I visited had a list of several techniques to outline a plot and generate more ideas. Most of them were completely useless to me because I had already tried them in the past and had little results, but they offered some insight so I could continue researching. The second page was gold. It had a little power point presentation that sparkled me. It was such a silly thing to try that it made me feel utterly dumb and stupid for never having tried it. I had heard of it, but never payed any attention to it, thinking it was just another stupid idea. Anyway, the presentation is in this page. Just scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page. It also has a link to another page that was also very useful to me.
The part of that idea that got to me was that I know that I can't outline following a logical order. Still, I hate writing chunks and pieces out of order, especially without an outline. It was like a roadblock. The technique that ended this debate is called clustering. The theory is that the brain has two ways of processing information. You can use the left or the right side of the brain. With the left, you think linearly, one step at a time (what I was doing before). With the right side, you think in patterns, emotionally, you create connections and images, in a more complex way and the story suddenly flashes to your mind as a whole. That's what I wanted to achieve.
Basically, using clustering I can write any story of any length I want, out of thin air. And you can do as many clusterings as you want in the same story. Then I will use the logical side to organize the ideas and sequence the story. A combination of both.
For those who don't know how the technique works and are too lazy to download the presentation in the site:
The first thing you need is a piece of blank paper. Write a base word in the center and circle it.
Now, write everything that comes to your mind afterwards. It doesn't matter how connected it is, how ridiculous, how remote, silly, or how difficult it is. It can be words, phrases, dialog, elements, literally anything. Connect these words to the first using arrows. In the beginning they will have little connection to each other and they'll be just words. As you continue, ideas start to flow and you will either end up concentrating in one aspect and ignoring the others, or connecting everything amongst each other in a intricate plot. Follow this with the new balloons, creating branches, interconnecting ideas, and using the paper you have. Don't stop until the page is full.
Example:
Base word is blood. From this I had three balloons: gunshot wound (whumper here, lol), ATA gene and family relations.
Blood -------> ATA
-------> Family
-------> gunshot
From family I had two balloons: Dave and Patrick Sheppard.
Blood -------> ATA
-------> Family ---------> Dave Sheppard and Patrick Sheppard
-------> gunshot
From gunshot I got enemy and from Dave I came with Earth.
Blood -------> ATA
-------> Family ---------> Dave Sheppard ----------> Earth
-------> gunshot ----------> enemy
Then I connected enemy with Earth and had The Trust. From Trust came kidnapping. I also connected ATA with Dave, because he's likely to have it. I wrote that down and connected it to kidnapping. From kidnapping I generated a whole branch for the emotional side, and even had thoughts and dialog written down. I also generated another branch for the technical aspect, how many people, where, how, etc. I generated another branch for rescue. You can see that now I was totally absorbed in the clustering of ideas and in a matter of minutes a whole A4 page was so full I had to turn it to the other side to continue. And just five minutes before I had no idea where the fic would go.
When I finished it, I broke everything down into scenes. Instead of using new clusterings for each scene, I outlined it the old fashioned way, because it was just a short fic. For a longer one, you can generate one clustering for the whole story, then one for each chapter. So, a ten chapter story will have eleven clusterings. In the end, break everything down and sequence the ideas. Then you write it.
The page from Gabriele Rico has some examples with images.
This is an example I made for the story from the prompt Awareness:
Anyway, this ended up a long ramble, but I hope it can help someone as much as it helped me. It brought back my motivation to write and now that's all I think about the whole day. I'm thinking about expanding personal challenges as a way to keep me working on new ideas. The secret is to find out what works better for you.
kristen999 also posted about how she likes to outline and write long fics, and I would like to know what works for the other writers from my f-list.