Newsletter 6: Playing the Balloon Game with Your Emerging Novel.

Wendy’s Newsletter No.6 Thursday March 26   2015

Hello again. Thank you for returning to my Writing Process Newsletter.

If this is your first time, welcome. 

Writing a novel is a large exercise - occasionally a grandiose enterprise. Sometimes you may stop and say ‘A novel? What do I think I am doing, writing a novel? Why am I not writing a short story, a poem, something short?'

All writing is a very close in, nose-to-the-page enterprise. Never more so than with your novel. Here in my Newsletter I have suggested writing on and on, scribbling in your notebook and creatively transcribing onto the machine every ten or so thousand words, in the process laying a rich groundwork for your novel.

But there are times you the writer need to stand back and get some distance on this lump of writing you have made; you need to try to make out the shape that is emerging. You need to raise your eyes to the horizon. When you do this new characters will  join you on your pathway; new destinations will present themselves. You become the pathfinder, discovering new  routes buried deep in your existing narrative. These will help you find your way to the later stages of your story.

One way to achieve this is to change the way you see your story. It helps to find a way to conceive it not just as a heap of words but as a graphic entity.

One way to see it as a graphic entity is to play what we at RoomToWrite call -

The Balloon Game.

It goes like this.

·        Get a large sheet of paper or card and place it on the floor or on a large table.

·        On this piece of paper draw seven balloons randomly scattered.

Balloons on large sheet of card

·        In black marker on each balloon write a phrase describing something that already happens in your story.

For my novel Writing at the Maison Bleu at an early stage my balloon were scrawled with these phrases..

When Francine meets Aurelie on the plane.

When Francine walks through the rooms at the Maison Bleue

The view from the window

When Jo and Lolla meet in the pub

Felix and Abby in Paris.

When Kit meets his agent in a London Restaurant

The arrival of Maria Slack at the Maison Bleue

Each balloon  should contain a phrase about an event which already exists in your transcribed draft.

·        Now draw another seven empty balloons and scatter them among the existing balloons.

·        In the empty balloons brainstorm and write phrases describing possible events and happenings for your story. (Time to be a bit wild…)  What could happen? What might happen?

·        Now stand back and look at your balloon sheet with its existing and its new  events   

·        The previously empty balloons will have edged their way into your story.

·        Now take a bright coloured marker and draw arrow connections between the old balloons (already written…) and the new balloons (not yet written...); these arrows can carry the questions you ask yourself about the connections between the different elements.

If you are lucky enough to have a writing buddy who knows about your novel it can be great fun to share  brainstorming Balloon Game together

This new way of seeing can get quite messy but it raises your inspiration, brings to life your burgeoning narrative as a whole novel. During this time of ‘playing’ you begin to see your novel as a whole rather than a lot of sequential beads on a string. (And then…and then… and then …)

Game over!

You can stick this sheet on the wall and keep an eye on it  and go on, using the process of drafting and creative transcribing your novel in linear sequence just as you wrote the first part. Your novel now has some kind of future self. You will be buzzing with new possibilities so that’s good in itself.

Or you can use your Balloon Game more dynamically by drafting new sections for your novel out of linear sequence.

·        You could draft some pages about  an event which you now know now must happen towards the end that looks rather crucial. 

·        Or you could draft  some pages about what happens when two characters change their mind about each other. 

·        Or you could draft some pages about the time when the market square is flooded by a deluge.

·        Or you could write some pages about the time there is a row over a meal.

·        Or you could write some pages about what the time in the past when something terrible happened.

·        You can think about – and draft – sequences answering the questions you have posed yourself along the connecting arrows.

Remember you do not need to write these events in linear order. 

This ‘Balloon Writing’ counts as fresh inspirational writing and these freshly written pages will find their place in the novel in the latter stages, when you finally assemble your whole narrative.

In playing the Balloon Game and writing on from your Balloon Page you will add fresh life to the middle ranges of your novel which might otherwise be slumping along a bit. (And then… and then  ... and then…)

However you proceed the Balloon Game  you will keep creative play at the core of your writing. So important. 

Writing, long or short, should never be a chore or seen as self-imposed homework. It should be absorbing and colourful fun.

Find out about Francine, Joe, Lolla, Maria et al
in Writng at the Masion Bleu Here WX