Plotting Maniac

Posted by Jen on Friday, July 10th, 2009 @ 3:37 pm

Somewhere along this crazy writing journey, I became a plotting maniac.

Up until last night, I’ve done most of my plotting on the computer. But I’m contemplating a pretty extensive rewrite of CLASH, and I wanted something big and visual to help me organize my thoughts and changes to the plot. And just the very act of doing something with hardcopy material ignited some creative brain cells. So, I made this:

It’s the plot board for the rewrite, but not actually the finished product. I’m changing a lot. Pretty much slashing the middle of the book and going in an entirely different direction, slashing a subplot and adding in two new subplots. The plot threads shown right now are the major plots that were in the previous version but with the changes I’m making accounted for. Now that I have an awesome visual display, I’m going to go in and add the two completely new subplots that are being added into the manuscript. Need some other post-it note colors for them though!

I was feeling a little overwhelmed at first, but having this neat and organized board makes me feel much less…scared. Once I’m finished with it, I’m going to go into Liquid Story Binder and write the new chapter outline. And then the hard work will begin.

I also have the revisions for BONE DRY to do before sending that off to my CP and beta readers, and then agent. I’m trying to let it sit, but I’m itching to get back to it. I’m also going to create a plot board for it, but thankfully, I don’t think it needs any major revisions to the plot. I’m giving myself only a few more days before I cave and get started. Patience, what’s that?

Edited to add: And here’s the final version of the CLASH rewrite plot board. It’s so pretty.