Mwaha...ha?

My evil laugh needs work XD But besides that....

I haven't done much writing, but I have good reasons which may or may not include watching Tangled, The King's Speech, and shopping at a bookstore which was having a 90% off sale. Oh yes. At said bookstore which I may or may not have visited, I bought a little book. Said little book is called "The Writer's Little Helper" and I've found it appropriately named. My favorite feature so far is called the Ten Scene Tool. The author, James V. Smith, Jr., suggests using this tool in place of the classic outline, mainly because outlining...
 takes away from the "creative aspects of writing." I plugged in ten scenes from Avaria (see two posts ago) and actually liked the results =D I still need to flesh out my ten points, but they adequately trace out the main path of my story.

So, how does this Ten Scene Tool work? Unfortunately, it's a picture, and I can't draw on my computer screen, and my webcam is acting up and refusing to let me find it, let alone take a picture with it. But on the brighter side, it's not all that hard to explain (although knowing me, I'll mess it up horribly and have you all confused). That said:

Elisabeth's Interpretation of the Ten Scene Tool  (May or may not be correct).

There are four columns (it might help if you draw them). The first is the Opening, and it has 1 rectangular box underneath of it. That box is called The Opener.

The next column is The Beginning Stuff. It has 3 boxes under it: Complications, Other Complications, and Point of No Return Complication (don't worry, I'll organize these better at the end).

The 3rd column is Middle Stuff. Box 1 is Nameless Box , Box 2 is Nameless Box 2, Box 3 is Other Complications, and box 4 (the highest box on the picture) is The Closer/Climax. (The Nameless Boxes are to be filled with scenes of your choice, so long as they're important and move the story along).

The last column is End Stuff, and it has one box--the Ending.

Let's see if I can give you a rough picture of how this is supposed to look.

Opening             Beginning Stuff                        Middle Stuff                 End Stuff
1. The Opener    2. Complications                  5. Nameless Box           10. Ending
                         3. Other Complications         6. Nameless Box 2
                         4. Point of No Return           7. Other Complications
                             Complication                    8. Complication                 
                                                                     9. Climax!

                                                                           
                                                                           


(and do remember that these are supposed to be boxes... The numbers are just to show you the order in which to fill the invisible boxes).

Man, that was hard to format. Anyway..... I hope this will be of some use to you and, if nothing else, save you from doing outlines for a few days (Fozzy, I'm talking to you!). And of course, you all know that this tool doesn't belong to me--I just mess it up =)

Have fun, and I'm sorry that the Tool format out there looks like it was written with a crayon. But hey, crayons are fun!

God Bless!

~Elisabeth