Indexing

As much as it’s difficult for this die-hard pantser to admit, there might be something to the whole plotting thing after all.

While attempting my eleventy-billionth rewrite of Driving Into Forever, it’s come to my attention that there’s a lot more going on in this story than I realized. There is a lot of stuff that should have been included that I skipped over or only alluded to. Stuff that really needs to be included now.

Seeing as it was my first NaNo (and I was pretty clueless), I looked around at all these people who spent the month of October making character sheets and detailed outlines and I figured I should probably do something similar. So what I did was, I made a list of everything I wanted to have happen in my book – that’s as good as it got, a point form list.

When it came down to the actual writing, I cherry picked from this list, writing a scene for each point. I thought I was being so smart when in fact I was being incredibly stupid. I did not do them in order and I was left with a series of scenes that were in no way connected with each other. If I ever do a piece on how not to write a novel, it will be all about that.

Anyway, I realized to make Driving Into Forever work, at the very least I need a good outline so I can flesh the story out properly. And the way I’m going to do it is by using index cards, which I should have done from the very beginning, and would have if I’d known this method existed.

For those of you unfamiliar with this method, the idea is to take a stack of index cards and write a sentence or two on each one that describes a single scene. Once you run out of scenes/ideas, you can lay them out and put them in order before you start writing.

This is especially handy if you have more than one story line going on. It has the advantage of allowing you to make sure everything is balanced. This would have come in handy with Blood Ties. It has three, sometimes four, story lines going on at the same time and it would be nice to be able to see at a glance if I was spending too much time on one at the expense of the others.

To make it easier to see what card belongs to what story line in Driving Into Forever, I’m going to use coloured cards – one colour for Hannah’s scenes, a different colour for the scientists, a third for the bad guy, and a fourth for the good guy. I’ve only got four colours, so if there’s anything else I’ll have to use coloured pens on plain white ones.

Once I’m done with the cards, it should be easy enough to weave the story lines together in a logical manner and then I can go to town on the writing. I should mention that I’m keeping the very beginning, where Hannah is driving in the fog and ends up in the Myste, but then I’m going to get rid of all previous versions including the hard copies so I can write fresh.

God help me.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wordage Report

New Words:

Driving Into Forever – 0 words
Blog Posts – 867+0+651+1190=2,708
Total = 2,708

Progress on Driving Into Forever ground to a halt while I work on the index cards. Hopefully next week will show a jump in words.

And once again I didn’t do Monday’s post – I really had nothing to say. It’s still the pandemic and I’m still not going anywhere or doing anything.

Editing:

If you believe TraxTime, I spent 14 hours and 20 minutes editing Blood Ties last week – best editing week so far!

What I’m Reading:

I was moderate in my reading last week – I spent more time on it than the week before, but I’m not binging. I started with Unfinished Business, by Nora Roberts. I didn’t care much for the heroine at first, and I still think she should have woken up to smell the coffee about her father, but I did enjoy the story overall. This was followed by Cottage By the Sea by Debbie Macomber, which I really enjoyed, and I’m over halfway through Window on the Bay, also by Debbie Macomber.

I didn’t do any extra reading on the e-books, so I’m still working on Captured & Seduced, book three of Alien Shenanigans by Shelley Munro. I shouldn’t have any trouble finishing it this week, and then I’m done with the shenanigans and I’ll be looking for something new to read.

Goals

Technically I met all my goals last week. Blog posts are not on my goals list, so missing Monday’s post doesn’t count.

The editing on Blood Ties is going really well, but I gotta tell you every time I delete more than a single sentence I start second guessing myself. I’m working on the only copy of the draft I have, so anything I delete is gone forever. Scary stuff.

Realizing that there was more going on in Driving Into Forever than I realized was kind of an epiphany for me. No wonder I was having so much trouble with the previous versions. Hopefully the index card outline with get me back on track and keep me there.

It was easier to buy new yarn than to search the craft closet for my yarn stash, so I did, and I started working on a granny stitch ripple crochet afghan. To be honest, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed crocheting and it’s a much better use of my time than gaming.

This Week’s Goals

1. Keep up the good work editing.
2. Finish the index cards for DIF and get writing.
3. Continue with my balanced reading time.
4. Continue with the crocheting instead of gaming.

Looks like I’m getting there, eh?

Of Plots and Plans and Things In Between...

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse.
― Quentin R. Bufogle

This was the inspirational writing quote I sent to my best bud Jamie today, and in the accompanying email I said something to the effect that after careful consideration I have to agree with it. Writing doesn’t always make me happy, but it makes me a lot happier than not writing does.

The daughter was away for a conference this week, which necessitated me having to babysit during the day while her hubby was at work. Monday I was a disorganized mess. But Tuesday I discovered that by planning ahead things went much more smoothly. I even managed to get some writing in during the toddler’s nap time. Wednesday was the same.

I used to get very frazzled whenever I was expecting company, until I learned my aunt’s secret. She planned everything ahead of time, and did as much of the prep work for meals before the company arrived as she could. It’s amazing what a little planning can do.

During my writing time while I was babysitting, I was trying to work on a story but I wasn’t sure where it was going. So I jotted down a few plot points of what I wanted to have happen. That’s not to say I plotted the whole thing out, just a really short plan of the action.

A couple of weeks ago I used mini index cards to jot down the remaining scenes in the novel I’m currently working on, and even a couple of scenes closer to the beginning that I’ll have to go back to so I can fit them in. As plans go it’s not much, but it got me eager to start working on it again.

All of this made me realize that maybe there’s something to planning ahead after all.

Once upon a time I wrote a blog post about pantsers versus plotters. It’s fairly simple. Pantsers write by the seat of their pants - they just sit down and write, having no clear of what’s going to happen until they write it. Plotters, on the other hand, plan everything out ahead of time so there are no surprises.

Back when I was new to writing, I thought everyone was a plotter. So I spent a lot of time on outlines and maps and character sketches and eventually realized that I was spending more time on them (and having more fun in the process) than I was actually writing. My novel kind of stalled and it was years before I got back to it. Actually, my writing stalled - it was a few years before I got back to any of my longer fiction.

The first novel I actually finished was written purely by the seat of my pants. I was goaded convinced by Jamie to try my hand at a blog serial. I let the story progress naturally and most of the time I had no idea what was going to happen next. It was an adventure, albeit sometimes a frustrating one.

I wrote several other novels after that (that book turned into a series, of which I’m about to start number five), all by the seat of my pants. It was decided. I was a confirmed pantser.

But then I began to struggle a bit. My second series, based on that first attempted novel, began to flounder until I discovered all the character sketches, maps, and notes I made originally. While the characters had evolved well past those initial sketches, the notes were invaluable, as were the maps. Using the notes, I created the “scene cards” I mentioned earlier, half-sized index cards with a few words describing a single scene on each one. This will take me to the end of book three.

Maybe planning out a novel isn’t such a bad thing after all. Especially when you’re writing a series. And recalling those story notes I made ... I used to get an idea for a short story and just wing it. But knowing what’s going to happen actually makes it a little easier to write. And notes help jog my not-so-reliable memory when it falters.

So... while I doubt I’ll ever be doing a long-winded, multi-page, detailed outline such as plotters are famous for, neither will I dismiss the idea of a little planning ahead. I guess you could say I’m taking the middle road. “Neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.”

I’m not totally a plotter, but neither am I strictly speaking a pantser anymore. I’m somewhere in between. I ... am a tweener!