Welcome back to Fixing Friday. This week is ‘Scene by Scene’ where I go through my notes after reading the first draft and plot out the scenes and what needs changing. At this stage, I’m focusing on the ‘big picture’ stuff. The overall story structure and if everything was in the right place. It did feel like it was missing something.
A New Outline
Before I touched the manuscript again, I worked through a revised outline. I’m what is known as a ‘plantser.’ This means I usually start a writing project with a vague idea and just plough ahead and write, discovering the story as I go. Although I don’t always complete a draft this way. I then go on to create an outline from what I have, to figure out how to get to the ending.
I use the Three Act structure for this story, which is one of the most common story structures, although there are plenty of options. So I took my notes from my first read through and used the plotting tool on Lore Forge to fit all the story events into this structure.
It’s important to have a combination of action and reaction moments. Not every scene has to be high drama and excitement, there has to be space for characters to take a breath and react to their situation. It also gives your readers a moment before moving onto the next thing.
Creating The Outline
So what do I include in this? A few things. I’m learning as I go on this, so my process has improved since this early stage. But here’s the details I included in my revised outline, scene by scene. I created an entire date system for my world and part of the outline included a timeline with dates for each scene.
- What happens in the scene? This is probably an obvious one but it is essential.
- When it happens in the story. I add the date.
- What the scene’s purpose is. Is it character development, discovering new information, a significant event in the plot? There is one chapter where one of the characters makes an important discovery that will lead them to what they need, but it won’t pay off for a long time.
- Off the back of the last point, noting if something is significant for a character. Like one of them being forced to confront something from their past, or how they feel about a decision they made.
- Scenes should always do more than one thing and worldbuilding is a part of that. I do my best to avoid info-dumping too much, so I try to sprinkle world details throughout and show them through events in the story.
- Sub-plots and secondary storylines and how each scene interacts with them.
It’s a lot of detail, but the first draft is only the skeleton. This is where we dig into the meat of the story and flesh it out. I know that’s a bit of a creepy metaphor but it’s accurate.
Next Steps
I examine the outline for consistency and decide if it’s in the right order. Are events following on from each other in a logical way, while escalating the tension? Are there scenes that are not pulling their weight? In which case they either need to be improved or removed.
Cutting scenes is difficult. You wrote them for a reason, but sometimes they are just not doing enough to be there. I hate deleting things permanently, even if I’m ‘killing my darlings’ so I keep old versions of the documents just in case. It needs to happen, though.
After that, I felt ready to start writing the next draft. I chose to rewrite from scratch, using the first draft as a reference. I did occasionally copy over some bits from the original draft but most of it was rewritten. It still felt like it was missing something and I realised that one of the major characters was too involved to not be a main character. That meant I needed to upgrade him and give him his own story arc. I’ll get into more details on that next week.
Outlines are great to have but it’s important to remember that they are not etched in stone. If your outline is not fitting where the draft is going, then it can easily be changed. It’s all a part of the process.
Next week, we’ll be going into how I wrote draft two, upgraded a character to a main character and fleshed out his backstory. So I hope you’ll join me for that.
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