Plotting Crash Course, Day Four: Cheat Sheets and a Break

Well, we’ve only got a couple more days until NaNoWriMo starts. I’ve been doing a lot of work to get myself prepared – such as spending all afternoon and evening yesterday reading a random book which has nothing to do with NaNo Prep.

Yep. Subtle sarcasm …

Seriously, though, folks. Lately I’ve been working a lot on my cheat sheet. What is my cheat sheet, you may have asked (and if you didn’t, I’m going to tell you anyway)?

(Sorry for poor-quality photos! I’m in a hurry!)

Basically, it’s a great big piece of paper covers with what I like to call At Her Fingertips At A Glance (which … I just came up with and am now liking!).

Basically, on one side runs my outline, most of the scenes summed up like so:

So yep. Unless you’re me, you probably have no idea what’s going on. For instance, ‘bird’s nest.’ There are no birds in this scene! WHY IS IT CALLED BIRD’S NEST?!?!? Then I remembered it was a reference to Much Ado About Nothing. If you get that, please comment! I need to know culture still exists in this world …

Juuuuust kidding!

As I remembered a couple scenes, I had to add notes in about them like so:

Scattered about are also things I need to remember like the once sentence summary, quick notes on theme and other important stuff, etc.

I also made sure to include what goes where. For instance, I labeled the inciting incident, midpoint, and all other points of interest.