Wednesday 6 April 2011

Thumbs Up For Plotting

The plotting has worked.  The novel I’m working on has many threads which I was unsuccessfully trying to tie together on a spreadsheet.  I wrote them out on individual pieces of paper, spread them across the floor and started linking them together.  Having them physically in front of me made it so much easier to see which ones could be grouped together and also how they will work with and add to the main story arc. 
The whole novel’s now there and ready to write … I’ve scrapped chapter 1, re-written it and am ready to surge on with the story.  My protagonist is going to have lots of adventures throughout the novel and working on the premise that you need to have experienced something before writing about it, I’ve got a great few months ahead J

4 comments:

Sinead Fitzgibbon said...

Glad you are enjoying the process, Sandra! I'm terrified of fiction writing .. steadfastly sticking to non-fic at the moment.

Morgen Bailey said...

What a shame 'Love Life Food Art'. I can't think of anything (no, really) that I enjoy as much! It's the not knowing what's going to come out of your brain... even from something simple like a one-word prompt, picture or sentence start.

Louise Jones said...

Like your blog Sandra, it's nice to know everyone has ups and downs and also puts things off. So many tips as well. I'm glad I'm not on my own. I like your idea of spreading out your plot links etc to help keep track. PS I caught up with you from Twitter. Louise @auraessence.co.uk

Sandra Hill said...

Hi Louise ... thank you. I'm a grand master at putting things off:) I've got a 10 minute face time slot booked in at the Get Writing Conference in Feb for this novel to dsicuss my first 5 pages. Have discovered that 5 pages double spaced is a very short amount of writing and I've been madly hacking bits out of it so that there's more of the plot line for her to read ... hope she doesn't completely slate it !! Either way I'll own up to it on the blog afterwards :)