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Safari Supper- The Story Arc | ScrivenerVirgin

Hoorah! My story arc is written.

I’ve been waiting for ideas to come but today, determined to make progress, I opened my Scrivener project ‘Safari Supper’ and just started typing. The words flowed. It never ceases to amaze me how, faced with a blank page, given a prompt, I can write. What I write comes from who knows where. Hence my tagline:

I don’t know what I think until I read what I have written.

My main prompt was my novel title: Safari Supper. With my character list already in my head, plus the locations pinned down,  I was able to focus on what might happen. 293 words later, I’m feeling a lot more comfortable about my novel’s progress.

Stepping stonesI have left the safety of dry land, and am now on the first stepping stone which will take me to the far shore. I record my progress in MY JOURNAL.

What’s exciting for me is how, using Scrivener, I can use the planning part of my brain to organize my material – let my OCD tendencies have full rein – while enjoying the pantser approach I’ve always used in the past.

I’ve drafted five novels to date – all of them written in the heady spin called NaNoWriMo. With very little planning, such writing marathons were, on reflection, a complete indulgence. What joy! To write and write and write and see what happens …

In the run up to NaNoWriMo, there’s always a  debate on whether a writer is a plotter or a pantser. A GoodReads blog post (scroll down to the entry of 26 August 2015) reveals that John Grisham is a plotter while Margaret Atwood and Stephen King are pantsers.

It’s assumed you have to be one or the other: a pantser ot a plotter. With Scrivener, it’s possible to be both.

I don’t know what software JK Rowling uses to pen her novels, but she is definitely a plotter – as her plot notes show – but she says she leaves some things to be decided while she writes.

The liberating discovery for me today was that I could let my imagination run loose in writing the story arc. I’m confident that what’s there will inform the next stage: to expand upon the story arc to create my synopsis and, from there, to write my beats.

I will be interspersing periods of planning with periods of creative flow. I’ll end this blog post how I started: Hooray!

Your turn: How are you progressing? Leave me a comment – or email me – my details are on the Contact Us page. If you sign up for the SVblog reminders, you’ll also receive extra tidbits of information about Scrivener and Safari Supper and a lot else besides.

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Acknowledgment: © Goytex | Dreamstime.com – Stepping Stone
1 Comment
  • Patsy

    21 September 2015 at 22:44

    My first novel was written with no plotting or planning at all. I won’t be doing that again!

    For me it works to have an outline, but to be flexible. If I get a better idea, or something just doesn’t work as I hoped then I change it.

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