I've got a loose idea in my head an undercover officer infiltrates a group, possibly someone like the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, only for it descend into a farce as it turns out 90% of the members are undercover officers who don't want to blow their cover. So far the end result in my head is that the organisation ends up gaining lots of members because the officers make the group seem much larger than it would be otherwise and they're so adept at bureaucracy that they run the group far more efficiently than it would otherwise be.This is the point where you tell me this idea has already been done and far better than I could ever hope to write it. but I'm not entirely sure where to go from here.
I'm no expert but there are two basic routes. Some people work on developing in-depth characters then put them into a situation and sort of write along to see where it goes. The other route is to start with a basic plot idea then start figuring out how that would work, breaking the premise down into component parts; scenes, setting and characters needed to pull it off. It has to follow a basic structure with character motivations and things fleshed out for at least the principle characters to seem real and distinct, with believable behaviours.
Once you've figured that out, you arrange the scenes into order in chapters and the chapters in order of the book itself then keep adding detail to each part, rearranging as you see fit, until you feel confident about putting it into prose. At which point you do that. Then you basically do the whole thing again over and over as you realise what you've done doesn't make sense or is missing a key character arc or that you've made a really stupid amateur writer's error and as it's not a YA novel remarkably similar to any of the most recent best selling novels the year you finish writing it (as opposed to started), nobody wants to publish it because they don't expect to bank on it.
Everyone does a weird mix of the two routes though, nothing's ever "purely" one or the other. You just figure out what you're doing as you go along.
It's best to write it second person, present tense or you'll be setting yourself at a disadvantage from the start, if you ever want it published. Oh, and remember to back it up constantly or you'll definitely lose enough of it at some point that getting back to where you were before it crashed seems insurmountable.
I can recommend pirating Scrivener to use as a word processor; it's pleasant to write into and has a file manager thing that makes it extremely easy to navigate and overview the work as a whole. It has all sorts of other bells and whistles you won't need but the first half hour in its tutorial thing should cover everything you will use.
>second person
Sorry, meant third person.
After you've finished, put the whole thing away without showing anyone and concentrate on other things for a year. Then get it out, re-read it and basically write it all over again, not entirely from scratch but you'll probably be making huge changes.
It helps a lot to be able to print out what you've done, preferably in a different font to the one you were writing in and read it out loud to yourself. It'll make it much easier to spot poor sentences, bad rhythm and flow, then you can fix it.
I've thought of the opening for a book. It's about someone having an unfortunate life from the moment they were born because their mother did a massive shit during childbirth and they ended up covered in it.
I'd just have to figure out the rest of the story and what it would be about.
I cannot remember the actual details, but it actually happened in the USA in the '70 or '80. All normal members left when an agent provocateur advised violent actions, and the only people left were infiltrators from different government agencies.
G K Chestertons The Man Who Was Thursaday might be worth a read. It sounds essentially the same but the ending - more a mystery around who's undercover and who's not, and a bit of talk about anarchy. It's pretty short. Might be helpful.
I've always wondered about writing; whether you should have something to say that your characters revolve around or if it should be nothing more than a story. I can see both aproaches being boring for a reader.
How well does screen writing theory translate through books? The anatomy of a story kind of thing?
>>7060 I've never seen anybody reference Chesterton outside of the early Deus Ex fandom but I welcome it. It's like he stepped in from an alternate dimension where Arthur Conan Doyle wasn't insufferably dull.
>How well does screen writing theory translate through books? The anatomy of a story kind of thing?
Screen writing theory is (with the exception of modernist filmmakers - you know the ones) largely based on classic literary structure. Joseph Campbell constructed the model of the "monomyth" or "hero's journey" that has been so ubiquitous throughout the ages that it's difficult to shake it when watching film or engaging with formulaic prose once you're aware. That's not to say it's tacky or overdone, just overly reliant on plot linearity rather than individual character exposition to flesh out the book/film universe.
>>7062 > I've never seen anybody reference Chesterton outside of the early Deus Ex fandom
Not who you're responding to but DX was how I got exposed to Chesterton's work.
There's something else I'd read written by him, something that was quite profound and even more so given that it was written a hundred years ago. Can't fucking recall what.
Sage for veering off-topic.
