This morning’s…

This morning's novel-plotting session; I think I'm ready now to revise Part 2, and have a pretty good sense of what's coming in 3 and 4. Thanks to Julie, Amanda and Kat for letting me bounce ideas of them -- Kat, especially, was extremely helpful in rethinking plot and character complexities, and if you need that kind of help with your novel, I'd recommend her as a book doctor / developmental editor. I think she'd do great working that kind of thing out via phone or Skype. (She also already does copyediting / proofreading.)

And thank to the Tremontaine team (Ellen Kushner, Tessa Gratton, Racheline Maltese, Julian Yap, Joel Derfner, and Paul Witcover) for showing me the utility of bulletin boards and notecards. I've never needed them before for short stories, but I'm finding them really helpful for plotting out longer, more complicated projects, when I can't hold it all in my head at the same time.

Here, each color going across represents a different character, which helps me see where there are holes or underdeveloped motivations / action. Everyone important is doing something significant all the time. And bouncing it off other people makes it clearer to me which bits I really care about, and am willing to fight for, and which were just early decisions that can easily be rethought / discarded. The book is much better now. :-)