Now that's a novel
So, I was about to go Stephen Hero on my novel. Honestly.
I just started writing in the hopes that if I wrote enough, I would eventually get back on course. That's what they say; they say, write through it. Well, I wrote all right. And it got longer and longer and longer. I had 45 single spaced pages of scenes to add and 299 single spaced pages of actual novel. And it just...didn't work.
Individually the scenes worked. But as a parts of a whole, they forgot details, they missed points, they were too talky, they left plot holes that a truck could pass through. They just didn't work.
So, I told my wonderful wife this and she suggested that I take index cards. For each scene, put a sentence down describing it...then shuffle the cards and put them back in order.
Since that time I have charted my way to the end of the book. The line requires some side points. There are numerous scenes, I imagine, that will need to be written so as to support the path through, but there is a path.
I have included in this post pictures of that board. Each of those index cards is a scene between 1 page and 5 pages, average scene length is pretty much 2 pages.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
10:57 AM
3 Comments:
I think this was an excellent exercise. I have one particular writing project currently languishing on my hard drive for which I bought index cards but didn't use them. I decided to try virtual index cards instead. But, I think actual physical ones are much better and hope to return to that novel sometime.
At least Joyce lived before hard drives were invented. Burning a manuscript is one thing, but pressing delete in a fit of rage is considerably easier.
(Oops... Guess I should learn to remember what account I'm using when I comment, eh?)
I bought corkboards to do much the same thing with. They sit now with other things cluttering the space that was supposed to go to novel-related tidbits. My novel is scattered all over the house. Handwritten pages hide everywhere and typewritten pages languish in a binder. A chapter or two are actually missing. I'm not sure where they went. They were fairly well-written chapters, too, making their loss all the greater. When I can bother to remember that I'm writing a book, I lament the fact that I cannot get these things straightened out unless I somehow retire from regular life. No work, no play, bye bye world. Then the book would be written, I imagine wistfully, as I glance at a pile of yet-to-be-played computer games.
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