Pepsilovr
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter”? Or somewhere in between? I find that even if I have a good idea of where I am going with a scene (or the book), the characters tend to run off and do things I hadn’t had in mind…
Lois McMaster Bujold
I've answered this before at greater length, somewhere, if you scroll back through the pile, but I'm in-between. I do a lot of general note taking, and pushing ideas around on paper to see if they'll fit, before I start writing, but it's as much a memory aid as anything. I then narrow down on scenes, my basic work unit, and outline each one quite a bit before I sit down and write it out, sometimes mutating as it goes. Then lather, rinse, repeat with the next scenes in a chain. I don't outline in detail in advance; future developments fade off into obscurity pretty quickly, until I work my way closer.
I have more problems with characters sitting down and not moving than with them running off.
When I'm writing anything at all, that is.
Ta, L.
I've answered this before at greater length, somewhere, if you scroll back through the pile, but I'm in-between. I do a lot of general note taking, and pushing ideas around on paper to see if they'll fit, before I start writing, but it's as much a memory aid as anything. I then narrow down on scenes, my basic work unit, and outline each one quite a bit before I sit down and write it out, sometimes mutating as it goes. Then lather, rinse, repeat with the next scenes in a chain. I don't outline in detail in advance; future developments fade off into obscurity pretty quickly, until I work my way closer.
I have more problems with characters sitting down and not moving than with them running off.
When I'm writing anything at all, that is.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Judy R.
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Not a question, but a comment? In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, the engineer stated that the expressed water from the ImpSec sponge was shooting 25' straight out from the cliff before falling into the water. I see the book was published in 2012, as I checked just now. In 2014, a Red Cross briefing after the Oso Mudslide Disaster north of Seattle said that's what happened there, too -- a horizontal jet of water.
Rick Ellrod
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
The Sharing Knife maps are remarkably similar to the Midwest of North America. This has made me wonder occasionally whether it's really the far future of our own world - if one assumes a technological culture was succeeded by one based on groundwork, which then fell. Or is this an alternate America, like Patricia Wrede's Frontier Magic?
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