Well more thoughts on me and plot. I was going through more old notes I had made about plot. Have you ever read something you have written, something you said you were going to do, and then reread it some time later and have absolutely NO IDEA what you were talking about? Sheesh.

Here’s what I mean. I found this bit I had written as I was contemplating going back to work on my flying book. (Hmmm – I’ve also noted that I seem to write more about NOT writing than writing about writing.)

I am not going to think about the “P” word at all. I love my character and I want to give him the best possible book in which to share his story. Instead I am going to concentrate on scenes and conflict. I am going to deconstruct the current version, scene by scene, chapter by chapter, so I can see the first layer of holes. I know this story, VZ, has a braid of 1 internal conflict and 2 external conflicts. They have to balance throughout the story or the braid won’t hold. I’m pretty sure that when I start to color code the story I will find that I am heavy on internal conflict, okay on one external conflict, and way light on the other external conflict.

What am I going to do then? I will start with index cards, all one color, and put a sentence about every single scene in the book on its own card. I’ll put a code in the upper corner or maybe a small colored sticker that says either IC, EC1, EC2 for internal and external conflicts.

Then I will take a new color of cards and start jotting down as many possible scene ideas as I can that will show one of those pieces of conflict (one scene per card). I’m not going to judge the validity of the scenes at that time, but just generate the ideas. I’ll label them as well regarding conflicts. I’ll probably lay the whole book out on the floor so I
can try to feed in the ideas for new scenes throughout the book and look for more holes that need feeding.

And then I’ll write. 

Where did I get that stuff? I must have just read some writing book that proposed it as a way of figuring out your plot holes. I do know I haven’t done it yet because said flying book is still sitting in multiple boxes in my office waiting for attention. I’ve never worked like that before but so far, for this book, nothing else has worked yet so it is worth a try.