I’m about at the halfway mark for Girl from Mars, so today I attempted to plot out the rest of my novel. I did this by using a technique I’ve recommended to my students, but I’ve never done myself. So this is the first time.
I brainstormed all the things that I thought should happen, and then I wrote them, with different colours of card depending on which story thread they fit into. Then I tried to put them into an order that made sense, so that each story thread is spread throughout the book, and so their climaxes roughly fit together and interact.
Then I Blu-Taked them to my closet door, going chronologically from top to bottom, with roughly simultaneous events side by side.
There you have it: the rest of my novel. A little scary, huh?
Now try to keep the little fingers away!
Believe me, he’s tried. He’s not tall enough yet.
Have you thought of selling your adorned closet-door to an art dealer?
But then my kid could get into my closet and mess around with my shoes!
Hi Julie,
It doesn’t look scary, it looks frightfully organised, just the sort of thing I could do with as I’m faltering a bit at my halfway mark.
When you say ‘then I wrote them, with different colours of card depending on which story thread they fit into.’ What do you mean by different threads? It’s probably a very obvious answer but I want to be sure I’m on the right wavelength with it. I’m currently working on a M&B which naturally only focuses on the two main characters.
Cheers!
Carol
Ah, well I have one main character, who is the heroine and from whose point of view this is in as it’s in first person. And then she has two best friends and one friend who’s just fallen out of her life, and what happens with them and in their lives is on the pink, blue and orange cards. What happens between her and the hero is on the green cards.
I may, to help myself, do another set/colour of cards going down the outside to chart the heroine’s emotional development.
I wanted to do different colour cards so that I can trace everything easily, but also because my editor has reminded me that you have to let the threads of a story intertwine and emerge every so often, and I wanted to make sure all of it was fitting together.
i’m going to swap my coloured pens for cards…i love going out buying tools for writing…it took me six months though to use one writing pad, as it was so damn nice!
For the money you’d get for The Door That Is ART you’d be able to buy a host of new closets (what exactly is the collective noun for a group of closets?). Of course, you might need to think about getting rid of a few bookshelves to make space for them …
You know, Fran, a bestselling and many award-winning author wrote me today to say the very same thing…I won’t out her, but she was going to shop for coloured cards because the urge to shop is second only to the urge to procrastinate for writers. So you are in good company!
Ro, maybe I should just get a bigger house. Is that a cash offer, by the way?
Thanks Julie. Sounds like you’re really inspiring people with this idea.
Hmmm and come to think of it I do need a new wardrobe as well the cards.
Now there’s a good idea. Maybe seeing it all laid out like that will dislodge the block that’s taken up residence 2/3 of the way through this latest story line.
It should be a containment of closets.
Late post to this topic, I realise, but I’m a slow-learner. Seeing this reminds me of how I used to put chapters of my dissertation together. I ended up with great long trains of lined paper, all cut up and sellotaped together. I think my longest train extended out of my bedroom onto the landing. But it occurs to me, this would be a handy approach to plotting current WIP.
Hope you enjoyed the island!
Jx