{"id":591,"date":"2009-01-05T18:16:09","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T18:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/?p=591"},"modified":"2014-07-26T17:34:29","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T17:34:29","slug":"wherein-dale-belittles-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/wherein-dale-belittles-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"Wherein Dale Belittles Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><cite>Swordmaster Odyssey<\/cite> has certainly been a learning experience for me. I tend to wing it when it comes to stories, starting with a general idea of where I want things to go and then coming up with the actual story as I work. <cite>SMOdyssey<\/cite> is lucky in this regard in that when I started, I actually knew how it was going to end. However, as time has passed and I&#8217;ve actually <em>finished<\/em> things I&#8217;ve started (or gotten close to as much), I&#8217;ve begun to rethink a lot of my writing techniques, and my shoot-from-the-hip approach is no different.<\/p>\n<p>When I started inking <cite>SMOdyssey<\/cite>, I had a basic summary of the first seven chapters lying around somewhere (which became the first <em>five<\/em> chapters since some events were longer or shorter in practice than anticipated) and little else. I&#8217;d just storyboard about five to fifteen pages ahead and go for it. In the end, though, this has resulted in a narrative that just isn&#8217;t as tight as I wish it were. So, as of late, I&#8217;ve really started getting in the habit of doing full outlines for things. Not the scattered, disheveled notes a lot of people use, but a very clear and well-arranged summary breaking down major events and assigning them to chapters or whatnot.<\/p>\n<p>To this end, today I sat down and began something I should have done two years ago: plan out the entire story, beginning middle and end. Granted, things can change as I go, but I&#8217;m tired of loose story threads getting lost in the shuffle, and the pacing not always panning out as well as it should in hindsight. Hopefully, this should prove for a better over-arching story when everything&#8217;s finished because I can stand back and see where everything should go and get a glimpse of whether or not it&#8217;ll end up reading like I want it to.<\/p>\n<p>As for Sketchbook Monday, sorry about that, but I&#8217;ve missed it again. I spent all week writing a book and didn&#8217;t get around to drawing anything. I&#8217;m back to work this week, though, so there&#8217;ll be no excuses next week! (I hope.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swordmaster Odyssey has certainly been a learning experience for me. I tend to wing it when it comes to stories, starting with a general idea of where I want things to go and then coming up with the actual story as I work. SMOdyssey is lucky in this regard in that when I started, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-swordmaster-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}