5/31/2016: Clustering Large Stories

Clustering larger stories seems to require that you cluster in chunks. Then you cluster each chunk. So, something like chapters, sections, scenes, and on down to clothes and feelings.

Incidentally, writing from the hip and clustering both seem to require the Design mind—the exploration of new territory, and the hidden desire to make new connections. The only thing I question is the disconnectedness sometimes of how new scenes will come out. For instance, I had the addition of a new character being the protagonist’s father, and I don’t know where it came from. It doesn’t seem to have come from what I had already written—it may have come from a song I was listening to or something. But even then, the Design mind may have gravitated toward it because of some hidden connection that I had yet to make. I guess it’s not so important that each new idea spawn from another of your ideas (making a chain) as long as they connect. And not all the parts of a chain connect once the key pieces do. However, it is important to note that even if the idea comes from somewhere else, your mind catches it in mid-process of developing a web. Though the idea didn’t generate directly or solely from previous thoughts, it was attached by the same Design mind that generated the previous thoughts, and it finds its place in the same web as if it were generated by the design mind. If anything, the connection that’s made is a Design mind product.

One thing to remember—to keep the web alive, and assuming parts of the web are only in the narrative and not on a cluster, I’ll need to keep reading the narrative to stay fresh. That way the stuff stays alive in my mind for my Design mind to grab.

Also, for now at least, perhaps I should try closing each chapter like I did my vignettes. If the whole story is a cluster, or perhaps a mind-map, those can be the largest trunks of it.