Sweet 52
I hit fifty two scenes this morning. What a rush. Sixty is in sight. I’m so close now. I don’t have cause to cheer just yet, as not all of those scenes are full prose. Some are prose, some are treatment style — abbreviated present-tense narration. It’s a total shotgun mixture.
Is that a problem? Not at all. The problem has always been wrangling the plot and structure of the story into something I could work with. By work with, I mean write something that I would actually feel good about from the standpoint of storytelling.
I’ve almost got all the scenes in place. The hard part is almost over. Writing is the fun and easy part. It’s been a long road to get to this point. I’ve spent years trying to figure out a process that works for me, and I’ve finally found one that does. Is it perfect? Of course not.
Maybe in the future I will do all treatment style blocking of the scenes first — present tense narration, instead of third-person past tense. Or as I’m laying scenes, I may go full on prose. We’ll see.
The problem with prose is it takes me away from a solid working knowledge of how all my scenes function together. I get too deep in my story, instead of working broad to lay out the foundation. It helps me to lay the foundation first, and then build the prose walls on top of that. So to some degree or another, the treatment method of hammering out scenes is probably here to stay.
Some of the last few days have been the most rewarding time I’ve ever had working on this story. To see the characters and plot fall into place, and to have a solid (if rough) understanding of the entire progression of the story, well that is truly golden.
There’s a lot of hard work ahead, replacing the scene treatements with real prose. Then of course there is editing and revising. But the hardest parts are almost behind me. The next couple months are going to be an interesting time as I lay this monster to rest.
P.S. I want to say thanks to the believers and non-believers alike. The believers make the world seem a little less lonely. The non-believers fire my angst, and drive me to prove every one of them wrong. Thanks.
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June 22nd, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Congrats, Eric. Keep up the good work!
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Thanks Therese! How’s your WiP coming along?
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 am
very cool stuff, Eric. you’ve worked hard and it’ll only be a pleasure to move forward here–well, a hard-won pleasure :) looking forward to actually reading some Redchurch!
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Wip is going well, thanks! I’ve managed to get through all of the hard edits and rewrites. Now I just have to trim things down a bit and do the detail edit. I’m hoping to have it finished and ready to send out by the end of summer. We’ll see.
Good luck with your push to the end!
June 24th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Eric, it’s been really interesting and inspiring to read your process of figuring out what works for you. Congrats on finding it, and on making such amazing progress.
June 24th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Thanks all!
It’s been an interesting ride. I’ll be sure to keep posting progress, as well as process of course!
June 25th, 2007 at 2:31 am
That sounds great, and I’ve really enjoyed reading about it! Congrats on nearing the end!
June 25th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Hit 57 scenes this morning. Not necessarily trying to nail 60 exactly — that’s too arbitrary when your only goal is to tell a good story. I will definitely create a few extra scenes though. In fact, I will probably push the list up to 65 or so, just to be on the safe side. I know I’ll end up cutting scenes. I also noticed in my story that single character-narrative threads run for a long time consecutively, so I may need more ‘different’ scenes (punch up the b-story?) to offset and break up the main plot threads.
I will never work by word or page count again. It’s all about the scenes!
June 26th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
61. w00t!
Going to do 5-10 more for flavor and punching up B-storylines. It will also give me more to choose from if/when I decide to cut any scenes out.
I absolutely love it. SuperNotecard too.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I love this breakdown you explain. So many times we hear the advice, you can write a crappy first draft, but you’ve taken that advice and broken it down into more fundamental tasks.
Great to hear you’ve come so far with your WIP!!!
June 28th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Whoever came up with the “Write the whole story beginning to end in one big linear push?” They need to be shot. That method has caused me nothing but pain and frustration.
I will never do it again! Why would I, when I’ve found a way that is much more efficient, and actually works for what I’m trying to do? :)