One month later...

 
"Novella and Mirror" by Callie

It's been a month since I released the last revision of the Novella outline. I promised that I'd write about the outline and analyse if I consider it a success or failure. I did write a bit about it before, but it was a much broader entry than I preferred.

To put it bluntly, I'm disappointed in Revision 5. While some 10 pages of new material were added to the outline, many of them did not live up to their promise. I did not feel the revision progressed the story any further than it was before. I do not mean to say that I am going to remove the additional material, just that I'm not happy with it.

So what do I do now? I've been puzzling over this for the last month. The essential question is, have I gone far enough with the Outline? Have I laid out enough of a story that I should just forge ahead into producing episodes? I honestly don't feel ready yet. That leads to the second question, do I not feel ready because I'm not, or because I'm just afraid? Will I ever be ready? That's the trickier question. I'm hoping that soon I'll get to the point where I'll feel I've exhausted as much as I can do with the plotline, and I should just go for it. Right now I feel close to that point, but only with the first chapter. The other chapters feel largely undefined.

This means I could possible start producing strips right now, of course. I would work on the outline as the plot develops in the comic so I can chart out where things are going. The risk I would run is if I think of a subplot or element that would have been better introduced earlier in the story. This was a massive problem during the comic's first run, which eventually led me to stopping the whole thing.

I am, however, a better writer than I was then. I have a better story as well. The characters are far more defined than they were before. I have a clearer concept of the story. Most obviously, I have an outline -- something that maps out the story from beginning to end however vague and incomplete it is in places. I still feel there's more that I could add to it. There's elements that are floating around in my imagination that I would very much like to add, but haven't done much with them at all.

It's not just writing down the ideas, either. This worked well for revision 4. The ideas had been developing in my mind for a good while. Since I didn't reveal anything about what I was writing until the release date, I didn't feel I was "responsible" to anyone. This was another mistake of mine in revision 5. I felt I the response to all that work was lackluster, and wanted to do something that would, to use the phrase, "truly wow them". In the end, the imagined pressure made any sort of progress difficult to near impossible. It's no surprise to me then, that it turned out as badly as it did.

So what do I do now? I think the best way for me to proceed is to alter my strategy for developing the story. Just sitting down and writing out my ideas isn't going to cut it. The ideas I have now are too vague for that sort of action. Instead, I should develop the ideas before they make it to the outline. Basically, this boils down to making a mind map. It's a technique I don't use often enough. I consider it a "last resort" most of the time. This attitude needs to change.

Here's what I'm thinking I'll do to break this writer's block: First, I will take my vague ideas and mind map them. I will develop this mind map until I feel I have a good amount of material. Then, I will journal on the content of the mind map. This step is optional, but it's one I do already. The goal of the entries will be to clear my thoughts about what I'm about to write using the mindmap as a reference. Then, I'll write the section into the outline itself. Then, I'll start the process over. This will be referred to as the Writing Lifecycle. In order to keep everything as digital as possible, I'm going to employ Freemind, an open source mind-mapping program. Freemind allows generated maps to be easily exported to OpenOffice Writer, which is the word processor I'm using for this project. Weather or not the mind maps will become part of the outline or not has yet to be determined.

I'm going to try to give this method a shot this week. Hopefully that will kickstart things for the next revision.