Show, Don't Tell

On most of my writing days, I don't have anything to show for myself in a literal sense: There's nothing visually distinct about my progress beyond a gradual amassing of words typed. But occasionally I reach a stage where it's productive to get away from my keyboard and screen in order to write nearly indecipherable notes on index cards or sticky notes or other convenient rectangles. And then you get photos!

I started writing this draft a year ago, which is what it is. And hey, look, in that post I foreshadowed that "Once I reach a certain point, I may need to stop writing for a little while and make decisions about some elements that remain vague." So I guess that's what I'm doing now, as well as determining structural changes and mapping out what's ahead.

First I wanted to reread what I've written so far. I also wanted to somehow see the entire work-in-progress at once. My solution for this was to print the manuscript with 16 pages on each piece of paper. That's too small to comfortably make out the text, but I reread on screen while following along on paper to notice things like how much space each scene takes up. I jotted down a lot of big picture notes, and the scale kept me from getting bogged down in individual sentences.

(Interested viewers can can click through and attempt to decipher my terrible handwriting, but I've reduced the image size on this and the rest of the photos, so you won't be able to zoom in to read everything.)

The reread went well, because A) it didn't leave me in despair, and B) it got me started on thinking about how to rearrange and expand the existing material to better set up what comes next.

I knew I needed to adjust the shape of the outline I'd been working from, and it was time to figure that out with visual aids. I grabbed a handy stack of paper rectangles (previously cut and left over from another project) and markers for color coding. Historically I've done my paper plotting on the rug, but my 50-year-old knees objected, so I brought in a table.

After a while, I ran out of room on the table and had to improvise an extension with a posterboard propped on a smaller table. (Some yarn was also pressed into service.)

When the first table's arrangement stopped being useful, I gathered it up and reclaimed the space for a new way to organize the plot.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so of course it should be perfectly clear what I set out to do with each stage of paper pushing and how much it helped. I now need to do some additional work to capture these plans back into the outline, and then I'll be ready to resume writing.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Emily St. James presents her tips for writing effective dialogue: "To state the obvious, good dialogue rarely involves characters simply saying what they're thinking straight out. Yes, sometimes, you just need to bite the bullet and write a line or two in that fashion, but for the most part, people are not just opening their mouths and letting their inner monologues emerge unscathed. It's important that your characters say interesting and unintentionally revealing things! But what really sets great dialogue apart to me is how someone says what they're saying. Every single person on this planet has their own rhythm and cadence to their speech patterns, and the more you can make your characters feel like their cadences are different, the more you'll be able to make them sound like different people."