Is to go through and slice out bits and put them where they need to be. This is the 52-card-pickup phase.
Young writers are frequently stunned to know that WHEN things happen is not really the plot. The plot is why things happen. And you can actually move events around without affecting the plot…to get a better explanation of that why.
So it’s moving day. Paragraphs are floating hither and thither.
I was amid this process when the computer meltdown began. I am going to go sort mediaeval relatives (real ones) for a while and quiet my nerves. A good search after who REALLY could have been the mother of Cecilia Erdington is enough to reduce anyone’s adrenaline. Except, of course, Cecilia’s next-ofs’.
Why things happen! Oh! What a lovely insight! I’m such a why-person that I hadn’t thought of story in terms of why before.
I hope you didn’t lose any work to the meltdown. Those are always scary.
As an unrelated Cultural Sidelight, you got name-checked on John Scalzi’s (of Old Man’s War) blog. He periodically puts up a ‘what’s new in Sci Fi and Fantasy’ list, and Foreigner appeared on this week’s posting.
Huh, that’s a good way to think of plot; I hadn’t consciously grasped that one before. I think I somewhat work that way, but not from planning it.
Perhaps nailing chronology down too early is one of the problems new writers have with plot, then? And getting too tied up in nailing down time and order first.
Nail down why and the necessary part of when tumbles out, I’d guess; THIS has to happen in order for THAT to happen, so it must be first, and all that. And then it’s taking that directed graph and working out the best way for the story to put the things that have some movement room.
And then there’s whether one tells it linearly or not; some authors like non-linear accounts, jumping back and forward, and some don’t.
Exactly…I trust ‘why’ more than “and then, and then and then…” Why gives you a lot more freedom, and lets you edit things with a lot more confidence. If you cling too hard to an ‘and then’, it can warp the whole book. But if your focus is on ‘why’, then you can move everything else around until it makes sense. If it’s all “and then…and then…” and no ‘why’, it’s chaos and often leaves a young writer wondering what his book is about, anyway…
I’ve lately come to learn this lesson for *non*-fiction…