Thinking In Bullet Points

THINKING IN BULLET POINTS How do you are taking notes? I know there are courses you'll be able to take which are essentially “the way to take lessons”â€"the way to write notes, how to spotlight a textbook . . . I by no means took one of those classes, which can partially account for my C-average public faculty education. I are inclined to see notes as a type of personal, even creative expression. There has even recently been some studies carried out on the constructive nature of doodling. I’ve been asked a variety of instances for path on the way to take notes, and I tend to default back to: “Do what works for you.” And that basically isn’t me just avoiding the query. I truthfully consider that’s one of the best recommendation. A traditional jungle pulp you'll be able to learn by clicking on this picture! That having been mentioned, I’m at present teaching a two-part workshop on writing pulp fiction the place we’re writing 6000(ish)-word short tales using the Lester Dent “method,” and st udying about the American pulp custom in general. I’m writing a narrative for the category, too, which may also serve as the first in a sequence of jungle pulp stories I’m writing for Pro Se Productions. Yesterday I shared my define with the class, which included all the notes I have concerning the story’s three principal characters: CHARACTERS Princess Tai Kyle Thomas Jameson Zembu This was copied verbatim from my handwritten notes. One fear I have about sharing this in such a “uncooked” type is that there may be a bent for others to read this and connect emphasis to issues based on, say, the order of the bullets. That order was unintentional, or anyway not edited to create some kind of hierarchyâ€"what’s most necessary about every character. It’s all in the order in which it got here to me, and all but a couple of have been drawn from different notes and the define for the story itself, and in some circumstances with the idea that that is the primary in a collection of tales in mind. Not all of these things, for instance, will be made clear in the first story, and in some instances, there would possibly even be bits which are never expressly introduced in any of the stories. This means of taking notesâ€"bullet factorsâ€"can be environment friendly and liberating. I’m not spending inventive power crafting a sentence, I’m simply jotting down reminders. I’m also freely mingling bodily description like how tall persons are with psychological and emotional states, and with private histories and experiences. This isn’t a character sketch or description, these are just some issues I felt I wanted to keep in mind both for consistency’s sake (so a character doesn’t develop and shrink all through the story) or to help transfer the story forward, just like the villain’s motivation and what folks can and might’t do by way of the invented jungle “magic.” This can also be a place where you'll be able to hold reminders for those little cha racter traits, what I generally call “twitches” or “tweaks,” like the jujuman’s persistent cough. A few little things like that in each character’s listing might help convey them to life, and, as in the case of this guy’s lung problems, illuminate some aspect of the worldbuilding. This man’s a witch doctor and spends lots of time standing over a smoky fire, throwing in chemical substances to vary the color or nature of the flame to thrill the devoted, and God is aware of what he’s been inhaling all these years. This storyâ€"the entire collectionâ€"is, like all pulp jungle stories, a totally-acutely aware Tarzan pastiche, however I’m turning it the other way up, so the white man is extra of a Jane/Dr. Watson character and the African woman is the heroâ€"Tai is Tarzan. So the fact that she’s taller than Jameson matters. She actually looms over him, playing into the flip in expected (by 1632’s requirements, anyway) gender roles. They also fight off a pack of hye nas within the story, and male hyenas tend to be smaller than feminine hyenas, so the relative top of characters is a storytelling hook. If it doesn’t matter how tall any particular character is in your story, you may never want to put in writing that down. That’s one cause that character varieties, like I complained about in a earlier submit on Storyist, tend to make me bristle a bit. And even though Writing Monsters features a monster kind, you’ll notice specific recommendation to go away out something on the shape that doesn’t really matter to your story. Another nice factor about bullet factors is that they can be easily changed. In the method of writing the story, I guarantee you my define will changeâ€"at least slightly bit. I give myself permission to have a better concept, and you should give yourself permission to do the identical. Maybe I’ll determine I want everybody to be shorter or taller. Okay, then they're, however I’ll not only change that bullet level in my notes/outline, but do my best to read again and make sure the change is persistently utilized all through the story itself. Your notes, like all your writing, should be a fluid, residing factor, right up till the second you decide you’re accomplished . . . well, then an editor may “rehydrate” it for you, but okay, it solidifies as soon as it goes to typesetting! â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans I am doing related work in Evernote. Then, if ideas hit, I can pound them into my phone and it's synched to every system. I don’t have to attend to get to my laptop. I even have a “Note” for character names, too, in order that when these naming juices flow, I can just document them. When they get more of a job, they'll “earn” their own, particular person note. EverNote is searchable and linakble, too. I additionally like pasting in photographs that encourage ideas about locations in my world. I use the bullet notice methodology too however I don’ have an Evernote app on my cellphone. I use both word docs and Evernote, utilizing bullet notes from character description to worldbuilding. Any new/refreshed ideas that pop into my head are written down to be typed later after I get to my laptop. You wouldn’t consider how many inspiring ideas I had however failed to recollect as a result of I didn’t have something to put in writing it down. That’s why I always carry a pock et book and pen with me, once I didn’t before, and use my cellphone’s notes app to swype or report my ideas.