Writing Tools - Which Do you Use/Not Use?

[niniane]

(x-posted to:  Critique_Circle )

Anyway, recently I had someone recommend that I check out a character template.  I did, and it got me to thinking about writing tools and which are useful.  (Incidentally, I found the template to be pretty useless.)

I'll be honest in that I haven't found any writing tools to be useful enough to be worth working with.  This may be in part due to methodology (I tend to start with a plot, then flesh out the story with the world and characters I need for that plot, considering the whole time what sorts of people they'd need to be to respond in the way they have to in order to make the plot progress.  Of course, sometimes they surprise me, but...all the same...I build them in response to the plot, rather than the other way around, and half the time don't care about details like their hair color or ethnic background, which can sometimes be completely irrelevant.), and may be in part due to arrogance/apathy/sloth.

That said, I do think that certain checklists can be super helpful - I just haven't seen any that I'm all that excited about.   So I wondered if any of you knew of any awesome tools for world building/character building/plot development, etc.

Comments

[smw]

I'll second the idea that each individual is going to develop a certain set of tools that work for them.

Personally, I don't work with questionnaire style character sheets because I find they eat up time I'd otherwise spend writing. I do keep documents with notes of various flavors – world building, plot ideas, reminders to add a scene to an earlier chapter – which I find is a good way to collect the information pertinent to a novel into one place without feeling too anxious about organizing it, which is something I get bogged down in.

Structured aids like lists of questions can be helpful in filling out blind spots, though. Frex, though the habit isn't natural to me, I write "walkthroughs" of subplots before I embark on them to make sure my glowing idea of where I'm going actually connects to where I am.

Also, I would not consider yourself too strange for being plot- rather than character-driven. It seems to me there's an even split among authors either way.

[niniane]

I do usually keep rough outlines as to where I want stories to go. Otherwise I get confused and, as you said, sub plots don't connect. (Which sucks.) Or they turn up in odd places and I have to restructure a huge chunk of the story.

Oddly enough, I think my characters got better after I became more plot driven. I used to look for chances to show off the brilliant creatures I'd created, and bored people in the process. (And often ended up with a lot of WTF moments as characters did something way OOC for them, as that was the only way to keep the plot going.) Doing the opposite - structuring the characters around the plot - actually works so much better for me. Gone are the tedious "let me show you what Emily likes!" scenes. And suddenly it makes perfect sense that Emily needs to collect butterflies for the plot to work out, because from the very beginning, I knew she'd need this ability so built a character who thought insects were awesome or whatever. (OK, made up examples, but still...)

It's kind of funny to me, as it's almost the exact opposite of how I tried to write starting out. I'm not really sure, either, whether it's my method that's better, or whether it's just a method that works better for me. (Probably the later.)