writing goals – Page 7 – Meilo Zaborowski: Author

Explorations in narrative density

Goal 1) Revise BM&A3

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 5, 32 scenes in
Where I am: Lesson 5, 33 scenes in
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
It occurred to me a while ago to deconstruct some of the episodes of cartoons I watch (I’m addicted to Adult Swim, sue me) to explore plotting and narrative density. Why a TV show and not a book? Because I’m literally already ripping a book apart, number one, and it’s exhausting. Two, I’ve seen these episodes several times and I’m familiar with them, but even if I wasn’t, I could easily refresh my memory in less than thirty minutes. And three, I enjoy them on their own, so poking them with a stick is also entertaining to me.

How am I doing this, then? First, I’m taking everything I’ve learned from Holly Lisle’s classes to separate the episode into scenes, represented by a single sentence of thirty words or less. Then I’ll map those sentences to Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! method.

…I have no idea what I’m gonna do after that or what exactly I’ll accomplish by doing it, but I guess I’ll find out.

With steel resolve, they slowly creep ashore

Goal 1) Revise BM&A3

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 4, 32 scenes in
Where I am: Lesson 4, complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
That, uh, went faster than I thought. Lesson 5 ahoy!

No one can hurt us like we’ve hurt ourselves

Goal 1) Revise BM&A3

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 3, complete
Where I am: Lesson 3, complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
Pretty good. Easy, straightforward lesson. On to the next!

We’re all architects of our own private hell

Goal 1) Revise BM&A3

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 3, 32 scenes in
Where I am: Lesson 3, 41 scenes in
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I kinda cheated on this one. I had already made most of the index cards for this while trying to work out what pieces of the story I was missing during first draft. I reworked a few of the sentences, but for the most part, I’ve just been renumbering the scenes (don’t ask) and marking the original page numbers on the cards.

And I’m already wanting to move scenes around. Argh.

Aka-iro shita hakai no uta

Goal 1) Revise BM&A3

My Goal: Finish one lesson every two weeks (roughly)
Where I planned to be: Lesson 2, complete
Where I am: Lesson 2, complete
On Target or Behind: On Target

How’s It Going:
I keep hitting the finale and forgetting what I’m doing because I’m enjoying reading it too much. -facepalm-