I’m used to getting weird hits to my blog from random spam sites. I get one or two a week. Should I be concerned that I got nine in the last twenty-four hours from Adult Friend Finder? I have days where I don’t even get nine hits. Is someone out there masquerading as me? You could have picked someone more…less…not so…random.
I’ve read on some of those ‘how to get more people to pay you money for the honor of reading your blog’ articles that a blog post should always start out with enough of a blurb to grab the reader’s attention, since so many of us preview sites in news feeds. Maybe I should stop opening my posts with things that aren’t related at all to what I’m talking about. Maybe.
So I have this novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2009. I love the story, because I love the characters. The thing is, when I was writing it way back then, I realized I started it too early. But it’s NaNo, right? You don’t edit until later. So I kept pushing through. Now, a year later, I find I have the urge to revise it. I’ve opened it, looked at it again, and realized that ‘starting too early’ means I need to cut the first 3/4 of the book.
Which means I need to know what happens after that last 1/4 I’m keeping. I have a general idea. I sat down and drafted a one page synopsis for myself yesterday. Not like the kind you’d send with a query. Nothing that grand. More like “and then they fail, and then they succeed again,and then they think they might fail, but in the end the princess wakes from her slumber.”
Which is a problem because there’s no princess in this story. Except maybe Zach. But only in his own head.
When I wrote ‘Uriel’s Fall’ the first time, I was inspired by an Evanescence CD. I had an idea and a character or two in my head, and I just let the disc play and wrote down some very loose concepts associated with each song. And the story flowed wonderfully after that. It worked so well that I’ve tried several times since to reproduce that phenomenon. I have yet to succeed.
So yesterday, in a fit of frustration and a need to outline ‘Serious Game 2.0’ (my new title as of yesterday, because Serious Game just wasn’t catchy enough for this story), I had an idea. I would give Pandora a song. One of the songs I used the first time I outlined this story. And I would take the next dozen or so songs it spit out in response. I made myself promise no skipping. That when it got to a song I didn’t like, the playlist was over.
And even when I thought of it I thought it was a bad idea. Because really – letting a digital application pick a playlist built of songs I probably don’t know? Not smart, right? More like…boredom driven?
But, it may have worked. I won’t know for sure until I actually get my revision done. But for the last eighteen or so hours, I’ve felt pretty good about the results. For those of you who aren’t big on punk/rock/metal/alternative rock, I understand. But I am. So that this list has some of my favorite bands on it was a nice plus (The Offspring and Foo Fighters, always at the top of my list):
I Want You Bad, The Offspring
Paper Wings, Rise Against
Anna Molly, Incubus
Something to Live For, Pennywise
Defy You, The Offspring
401Kill, Rise Against
Love Hurts, Incubus
The Pretender, Foo Fighters
Gotta Get Away, The Offspring
Dancing For The Rain, Rise Against
Stellar, Incubus
Hell Yeah, Rev Theory
Original Prankster, The Offspring
All My Life, Foo Fighters
And I can’t believe how perfect Anna Molly is for Max.
How do you outline? Do you outline? Do you let your characters lead you through the story instead?
I don’t frequently outline, but I have a rough idea of where to start, in my head.
Also, Defy you is one of my favourite Offspring songs, so yay 🙂
Awesome playlist!
I don’t outline. I’m led by my characters all the way. It means a lot of revision later though, because they don’t always go where I need them to…
okay,… I’ll try this again.
That is an awesome idea! When I first considered writing Angel/Demon, I was going to do it for a contest on WDC. The gist was to take a CD, use the CD name for the novel title and then each chapter had to be based on the songs of the CD. I was using Fallen by Evanescence but the contest never happened. I still have a couple of the songs on the novel playlist but now I’ve found other musicians to add to it.
I love using pandora because it plays songs I might have not considered and has helped me develop playlists though I haven’t tried your method. I might do that some day.
PS: I checked my stats, and I’ve had AFF trolling my blog as well. No worries; I assume it was just spambots. You are not alone.
@Brad – Offspring rules (one of the few bands that, over a decade later, I’m rarely disappointed in their music). And I’m glad I’m not the only one being assaulted by AFF. Weird stuff.
@Kate – hah! You’ve got excellent taste in music 😉
@Dawn – that was the one I used for Uriel’s Fall. Excellent mood music