Think Sideways - Month Two

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In the second month of How to Think Sideways Holly promises we will learn:

• How to Define Your Project's Needs
• How to Discover (or Create) Your Project's Market
• How to Develop Your Personal Project "System"
• How to Plan Your Project While NOT Killing Your Story

In Lesson 5 we learnt about the Dot and the Line. It sounded simple, we were confident in understanding the concepts that Holly put forward and we all got horribly confused. I think we half understood the Dot and the Line and what we were trying to apply it to both in a literal and metaphysical sense. The Dot and Line go hand in hand and when Holly released the revised Lesson 5 the concepts really clicked into place and they do exactly what Holly promised. They focus you on the important pieces of the story that you need to start writing the story without working on pieces that you can develop as you write.

Lesson 6 was a nice quick and easy assignment for me. I didn't have to create the market for my project and we didn't have to learn how to write a new genre. By working through the technique exactly as Holly described it I found out very quickly that my project would ideally fit into YA Fantasy. This was a surprise to me because I'd never come up with a YA idea before or even considered writing YA. By focusing on the core elements of the story and playing with their importance I could see how I could adapt the story to different markets.

Lesson 7, in contast to Lesson 6, is so vast. This is where we really start to get a feel for the important aspects of our stories. Accompanying the lesson are 8 modules that we work through to determine if we need them and, if we do, what we need to apply them to. Three modules were must-know: character, conflict & time. For all the other modules we had to ask: does it create conflict and does it force a main character to change. In this way I learnt to focus my world building. Previously, depending on the story, I have over done or under done the world building. Now I know how to get the right amount before I start writing.

Lesson 8 is where we determine how many scenes we are comfortable knowing before we start writing and we describe these scenes using the Sentence Lite. I was surprised, a little frustrated and so excited with my results.