Wednesday on Writing... My new toy!

Being a recent convert to the Save the Cat! method of plotting (I talked about it last week) this week I'm going to show you my brand new plot board.

Here is is -

As you can see, at the moment it is still very much a work in progress.

But what it has allowed me to do is work out firmly how many scenes and/or chapters to have and what should happen in each, as well as whether they work in the story or not. The pink bits are used for either word count or timings, I have a tendency to get my days very confused!

As a result of using the board, and actually staying away from the WIP for a while, I removed something like 5 planned scenes that I found really were not working, and added better ones in.

Behind each chapter card are cards that I have scribbled snippets of dialogue, flow charts, descriptions, etc, that relate to the chapter - I want to add that not everything is pinned up at the moment - when I'm working on that scene or chapter I take these cards down and spread them across my desk so I can refer them whilst writing. Then I pop them back up for safekeeping.

Funnily enough the girl who never plotted has written more words in two days than the last two months with the help of my new board (I was suffering a serious lack of motivation).

The board has really helped cement in my mind what needs to happen, but while I'm in the middle of a chapter I am still very much 'pantsing' it.

I have rewritten my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd chapters entirely and even I have to say they are much much better.

Yes, I'm definitely loving my new board. I just need to hang it on the wall now so it's not balancing on my stereo any more!