Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Plotting (rubs hands together) (mouahahaha)

I've been editing my novella the last couple of days. And even with just editing, I was stuck. Something is wrong....but what?

Then another author, Cindy Nord, who writes historical romance set in the American Civil War era, posted a picture of Christopher Vogler's Hero's Journey with the plot and character development tracked together and... well, let's just say I knew the plot needed something and the characters needed to grow and change, but I hadn't quite figure out how to organize it, yet.





And now, by stepping away from my computer for a bit and outlining my plot more or less based on that (at least on the 3 act structure), I know what to do now. Probably.

One downfall of being a "pantser" as a writer is that when you think of a new element to the story late in the writing, you have to go back and layer it through the whole thing. Mostly, I need to establish at least glimmers of the bits of conflict in the first quarter so we know what our heroes are facing. Or something...

Mostly, I needed to take a step back and look at the bare bones of the story. What happens when? Is it all happening at the right time? Should I move this scene over there? And I really need another scene over THERE.

Overall, it makes today feel productive when it was mostly feeling like rainy day with some guys banging on stuff in the garage installing a heater. So we have heat AND I have a direction. 

And now I can move on. WOOT!

And school starts tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be an exceptionally busy day, but I'll probably have time in the evening to work.

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