Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I Solemnly Promise . . .


I had a meltdown yesterday.

Working on a particular section, I needed to confirm something (I can't remember what) and skimmed some upcoming scenes.

Suddenly, it appeared that the character I'd just written about, who was standing up and everything, was in the hospital with a concussion. What!? I panicked. I looked again. Yep. There he was. All banged up and not a doppelganger. Crud.

My rewrites screeched to a halt while I tried to figure out the best way to proceed. Forcing myself to take some kind of action aside from pacing and gibber-jabbing, I sat down to organize a plan. I read through the hard copy carefully and discovered I wasn't whacked, just wicked. My poor character. {evil smile}

The barest of outlines would've saved me so much time and frustration.

Thanks to my new Twitter friend (I cannot call them tweeps), Glynes O'Connell, I was reminded of something I should have paid attention to. I wrote about a wonderful method for putting a manuscript together, and then promptly buried it. Sheesh.

Next time? At the very least, there will be an outline. I swear.



CR: Prime Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan.

It's all better with friends.

5 comments:

  1. Lol, that's the way edits go, isn't it? I'm always freaking out and breaking down and muttering "oh no, oh no," while I'm doing my edits.

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  2. I have a vision. It's me with my next first draft completed in front of me.

    This draft is . . . well, almost perfect (with a nod to my friend JM).

    I've written it fast enough that floundering is at a minimum. It flows and doesn't fart. Not once.

    To the right of my printed out, almost perfect first draft, is a little roadmap of an outline. An outline, that although not identical to the one I began with, was important enough to me as I clicked along on my keyboard that I kept it current.

    I'm months ahead of deadline, and besides, I was so organized with this one that my cps have seen just about all of it. And loved it, by the way.

    What am I hearing? Is that the theme from JAWS?

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  3. Those sharks always gather in the final scene. I'm going to have to start outlining one day.

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  4. When I first start to write, I'm def a SOTP, but I write an outline as I go. After each chapter, I add a short chapter summary to my outline. About halfway through the book, I turn into a crazy outliner and have to outline the bare essentials of the entire rest of my book. It's odd. I've written three books...and had to do that with all three. I think I'm nuts. lol...

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  5. Ralene, I think I like that kind of nuts.

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