Logic Puzzles

I hate the ones like on the SAT where they’re not much more than busy work.

You know. Lots of irrelevant information thrown at you about what the weather was like when Mrs. So-n-So’s 3rd grade class went to this specific zoo and saw a group of monkeys, so many males and so many females all eating fruit with even more irrelevant details thrown in. Then you’re supposed to figure out which monkey’s name, their favorite fruit and where they liked to eat it by the set of clues about their likes and dislikes.

They always involve setting up a table and filling in the blanks given the information in the clues. I hate when the kids bring these types of problems home because they refuse to see the pattern and get stuck in the irrelevant details. It’s all about focus, pattern matching and sifting through the information given to find the useful nuggets.

I feel like I’ve been working on a giant one of these this week. I’ve got a list of 22 scenes (so far) with various columns regarding what should be happening in each one. I’m not sure I have it slimmed down to the relevant info yet, but it’s coming along and seems to flow from one to the next.

The trickiest part has been stepping back and looking at each scene as a collection of beats like in a screenplay and making sure the final action leads to the next scene while at the same time making sure the scenes also progress through a story arc and also allow the hero and heroine to make their romance work. I suspect this one might fall under “with romantic elements” but I think that can be shifted a bit more to the 75% romance instead of 67% that it’s currently at.

Did I mention that I have trouble thinking short and simple?

I have all but the last 5 scenes sketched out. I think I still need to go back and look through them for how the characters are feeling at these points in the story, but once the timeline and what needs to happen is set out, I can get down to the business of writing this thing down.

I’ve tried to stick with a plotline that would be similar to the type I’d done for the game, and it’s interesting to see the parallels as well as where the way I think about it has to diverge from tried and true patterns. I actually have to go through the process of “playing through the quest” and figuring out what makes it interesting to watch from the outside instead of just experience on a personal level. Screw-ups are only interesting if they teach the hero something useful about himself that will eventually affect his overall success.

I still have doubts about the saleability of this idea, but I’m not going to worry about that for now. First, I have to get the first draft down.

I did find an interesting article over on Michelle Willingham’s site about how someone can go from hate to love in 11 steps. Definitely something I’ve seen repeatedly in my reading, but never really thought about as outline points.

So, what do you compare your writing process to? What have you experienced “Aha!” moments over?