I've been trying hard to figure out what to do to improve the pacing in my book. Yesterday when I got in my car, the "Writing Excuses" podcast CD had just gotten to the episode on pacing and tension. The podcast emphasized planning, outlining, and making sure each scene had more than one objective.
I must admit my outline was a sheet of notebook paper in my spiral from the workshop with ten vague plot points scribbled on it. I decided that before I tackle draft four I had better make a real scene by scene outline.
My, that was revealing!
Chapter by chapter, I titled each scene, wrote a one or two sentence synopsis, and then made note of the objectives. I discovered several scenes that had no reason to exist, other than that they had popped up in my imagination and so I wrote them down. That's great for draft one, but by draft three?
I was wondering why no one under the age of 13 had been able to finish the book. The first four chapters are fine, but then comes a great morass of world-building and wandering about with no apparent progress. The plot doesn't pick up again until chapter 8! Something must be done!
So, fellow writers, I highly recommend this exercise. Especially on a day when you don't feel like drafting anything new. You may learn things about your manuscript that you never suspected.
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2 comments:
Ah, Writing Excuses... where would we be without them? They have been so, so helpful.
Glad to hear that you found a way to figure out what the issue was. I'll have to do that with mine, too. :D Awesome!
I'm curious to see how many of my chapters follow that outline...!
I know that I'm really enjoying my story/characters much more this second draft.
Everything seems to make so much more sense, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing how things change during the third draft.
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