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The Art of #Writing: #Plotting and #Pacing Using #Scrivener

You’ve plotted or pants your way through your novel, spent long months of taking your hero or heroine from there to back again, and then you read it. And die a little inside. Because even though you’ve created engaging characters, put them in gut twisting situations, and gave them a resolution that makes you weep,… Continue reading The Art of #Writing: #Plotting and #Pacing Using #Scrivener

Scrivener on iOS

One week ago, Scrivener launched an iPhone app and updated their desktop application to support syncing projects between devices through DropBox. I tried it out and figured I’d help you do the same. Getting Setup In order to work on your existing projects on-the-go, you will need a few things. First you will need a free DropBox account. […]

Tidbit of nothing

Wazzup peeps… long time no write.
Word count: 66043 (6368 more since last post. Totally missed all my targets…)
Progression: Just ‘finalized’ the draft of chapter 13, almost 1K words on ch 14.

I just came through a terrible bout of writer’s block. I won’t bore you with the details. But that is why I have not done anything for 2 months. It wasn’t pretty…

So not a lot of new stuff to talk about… except my wall. If I didn’t mention it here before, I have on facebook or twitter, but I made a giant story arc wall a few months ago. It wasn’t very well put together (the wall not the story arc) but I am in the midst of redoing it.

I originally wanted to do it as a time line, with dates and, well, to be honest, a massive headache of Earth vs Lenaeu hours. Fuck that. It did help, but it hindered more than anything else. So I went to Lowe’s and Home Depot and got some stuff. Not the stuff I really wanted though.

So I got some insulation sheets about half an inch or so thick. I got two of them, 4ft x 8 ft each, and a shit ton of the sticky gel tape stuff, and some wall hanger thingys… This probably isn’t making sense, hence the pictures below.

Anywho, those sheets only cost me like 7 or 8 each. I really wanted the floor insulation which already had grids on it, but that shit would have been like $100 or so. What cost the most was the command strips (like $20 worth) and a roll of paper from office depot or staples that was like $10 but I only used like a quarter of it.

After multiple failed measuring attempts, I finally figured out how I wanted it to look and put up the insulation and paper about a week ago. Last night I got around to drawing some lines on the paper – you can’t see them in the pictures very well – which will eventually be darker. I also put up my outline – 17 characters (column), 1 exposition block (would have been more but I have already written those chapters and I am 99% confident I am done with this besides editing), 16 rising action columns, 1 climax column, and 1 falling action. You can’t see the climax or falling actions in the pic – I cut off my dirty mess over there cause, well, internet.

*WARNING* If you are reading my novel, DO NOT ZOOM! I tried to make it blurry, but you could still see a spoiler on the character names.
 I intentionally have it over the light switches, so don’t think I am a complete idiot. That section is Leah (below) and Ama (above) and since they have so many things, I wanted to have more room for putting up cards.

In the 2nd pic you can see the command strip thingy. There are a shit ton more just sticky things holding up the sheets, these were just placed around the edges to keep it stable.

So I might have less rising and more falling actions, but it is an easy fix.

Side note, the index cards and push pins will probably set me back another $20 when all is said and done. I think it would have cost me about $80 – I don’t rightly know because can’t find all the receipts and I already had the index cards and some push pins.

So why did I do this? To have a hands on experience. I use Scrivener, and it is great, but I wanted something in this specific format to see the progression. I guess it just shows how much I really do have a love/hate relationship with excel since I basically made a giant spreadsheet on my wall.

Well, just wanted to post this little tidbit of nothing. Hope you enjoy the pic’s at least!

PS.