
J.K. Rowling’s Plot Spreadsheets - danh
http://www.subtraction.com/2010/10/21/jk-rowlings-plot-diagrams
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DeusExMachina
To work on paper is a pretty standard way of working for creative people, I
think.

I'm working on a digital comic project with a particular direction twist (more
on this later). My friend is the creator of the comic and the director. I made
a software for the creation of the content of our app and he could use it for
the entire process. Still, he uses special sheets he printed for the purpose.
I will modify the software to look more like those sheets he created, but they
will remain his main medium to work on.

And when I'm developing something, I like to to grab a pen and to think on
paper from time to time, despite all the software designed with this purpose
in mind.

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lionhearted
> To work on paper is a pretty standard way of working for creative people, I
> think.

For the 180 degree opposite way of doing it, check out Stephen King's "On
Writing" - he creates characters, fleshes out their personality, puts them in
weird situations, and lets them figure it out. It's why he's gotten so many
books out, though you do some serious deus ex machina type events in his
works, as well as interesting books just petering out and dying after a strong
start. But hey, he's shipped _a lot_ of books, and some of them are pretty
stories. I'd definitely recommend On Writing for anyone who wants to do any
serious amount of writing.

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atomical
Are you suggesting that his characters write themselves?

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jon_dahl
That's kind of what King suggests. He recommends starting with life-like
characters and an interesting setting, and seeing where the story takes you.

The result is that some of his characters and settings are more interesting
than his plots. Example: later Dark Tower series.

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harscoat
"Novel geneticist" (= looking in detail how literary text/novel are produced
cf. link) P.M. de Biasi distinguishes between "with Plan" literature and "au
fil de la plume". 1st example is Flaubert (Many Plans and scenarii before
"writing" the text) vs Stendhal eg. La Chartreuse de Parme: 3 weeks to write
without detailed plan. <http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/toc/14021.html>

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bockris
I actually want to do this in reverse. I want to do a careful read of the
Baroque Cycle trilogy by Neal Stephenson and make a note of the location of
every major character for as fine of a time period I can. Then I want to load
it all into Timeline (<http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/>)

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whatusername
I've done this for the wheel of time.. Satisfying but a _lot_ of work. (Hoping
to put it properly online in the next week or so -- having some hardware
issues on my development system)

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InclinedPlane
I'm upvoting you just for the crazy amount of work that you've put into that.
It's hard enough just keeping things straight to a 1st approximation when
reading the books, meticulously keeping track of _every_ character is pretty
intense.

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whatusername
Oh thanks but I don't deserve it. Compared to some of the sites like enc-wot
-- mine is just a hobby. It just tracks things at a Point-of-View level. I did
it basically to try and keep track of what the hell was going on before
Gathering Storm came out.. wotsummary.com

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Timothee
Regarding using pen and paper, for certain tasks, I'm never fully satisfied
with either working on paper or doing it on a computer.

For things like UI, mapping out the basic architecture of an app, on one hand
I find that pen and paper is much faster and more convenient: you can scribble
notes here and there, easily scratch out parts, draw arrows; but on the other,
I wish it were more digital to reorganize things: make more room here,
duplicate this, move that...

With software, if I want to add a small note, I need to select a different
font or a different tool, click where I want to put it... On paper, I can just
write smaller.

But on paper, if I realize that I need to add an element in between two
others, the best way is often times to start all over again,

So neither are perfect, but maybe some touch interfaces will get us there.

~~~
alextp
A nice middle ground is a whiteboard + a digital camera. That sort of plot
list I would draft in a whiteboard, first the global, then the specifics, and
later worry about making sense of it in excel or something.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>A nice middle ground is a whiteboard + a digital camera.

Or perhaps a digital whiteboard using the Wii adaptation, a cheap projector,
computer and an IR pen?

<http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/>
<http://www.google.com/search?q=wii+whiteboard>

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gchucky
JRR Tolkien worked this way as well. He wrote out all the days for the books
and where everyone was, even down to what phase of the lunar cycle the day
was. There was actually an exhibit of Tolkien's notes that toured around for a
bit, and they looked not entirely unlike what Rowling created. For reference,
the collection was from Marquette University.
(<http://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/tolkien.shtml>)

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jwcacces
Can we please change the story link to
[http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/10/08/potd-jk-rowlings-plot-
sp...](http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/10/08/potd-jk-rowlings-plot-spreadsheet-
for-harry-potter-and-the-order-of-the-phoenix/) subtraction.com adds nothing.

