My first draft of Self Sacrifice had some problems, the most major of which is that it wasn’t a story. It was fragments of several stories, but no amount of retrofitting was going to put them together, as the characters were fundamentally different in Part B than they were in Part A. Sometimes the laws of the world changed. So I backed off, and determined to start fresh, from a storyboard and then a blank-page rewrite.
I have been fighting with organizing my storyboard. The storyboard is SUPPOSED to make things clear, easily modular, contained. All I had was a huge mess of post-it notes on cardboard.
Okay, that mindset usually means I’m trying to solve too many problems at one time. I tried to limit myself to part of the book, then a smaller part. Then I decided to collect the post-its together that were obviously related, make them tidy, and hold to one side those that I wasn’t certain of.
When I was done I discovered, underneath it all, the bare outline of my first draft.
Well, that explains why I couldn’t fix the storyboard.
So. Tonight I will remove all but the very beginning and very ending post-its, and then meticulously add in points that I know must occur to get from the one to the other. Then I will add in the points between the points. Slowly. Carefully. And with no care for things that I have written and therefore “know” have happened in the book.
Good, I guess, to know what I am doing. Still, I am ridden with ennui.