Planning

I'm not much of a planner. I tend to 'pants' which means I take the story wherever my pen (or keyboard) takes me and enjoy the journey from there. I don't worry about planning and when someone mentions plot or structure or even motive, I'm all like this:

http://title2come.tumblr.com/

Through NaNoWriMo, I found that working with a plan works for me because I know where my story is going and I don't end up with an incoherent mess afterwards, complemented with plot holes, vague settings and character inconsistencies.

Unfortunately I didn't plan Wren, Fall enough. While I was revising, I realised I have to work in another subplot to make a later arc believable. It doesn't sound like much but this particular subplot is large, dynamic and explosive and it demands attention because it's awesome.

That led to me pulling out a pad of paper and a multi-coloured pen and rewriting my 'three-act structure' all over again. This was a bittersweet choice because 1) I found loose threads and 2) I have to tighten them up. By 'tightening up' I mean discarding everything I've already written because hardly any of it will be of use.

That means scrapping all 57,000 words of my so-far second draft.

http://title2come.tumblr.com/

Cries. So many cries.