Mapping
11 weeks ago I wrapped up the first draft of the sequel to The City Between the Books and The Cities Beyond the Signal and started mapping out the four novellas that would make up Tales From Vasini IV plus five novellas (likely to end up as short novels) for another project.
A few weeks ago, I finished that mapping and the week before last I transferred those notes into Scrivener.
All that means that last Monday I started writing the first of those Tales From Vasini IV novellas.
Woo’hoo.
I should be a little clearer on what I mean by ‘mapped out’. There are those who plan and there are those who write by the seat of their pants. Then there’s me somewhere between the two.
I probably lean more towards a ‘pantser’ than a ‘planner’. My map for each story is simply that – something to guide me and get me towards where I’m going, but not necessarily dictate the route I take.
The map for each of those four novellas is a sentence or two on a number of index cards, that can vary from “X does Y at this location, where Z event is happening. They’re in this emotional state. A is also there to stop them.” to the oh so helpful “They find a clue” with no indication of what that clue is.
The cards are intended simply to capture the initial ideas of what the story is and the key events in that story, to provide a few landmarks that I can use to guide my way through and make sure I don’t get too lost.
There will, inevitably be diversions and, at points, I’ll realise there is a better route through. Scenes intended for one character will be better suited to another, certain events will reveal themselves to be unnecessary and will get cut before I even write them and other events will replace them, characters that I thought would be cool to include will get culled as they’re unnecessary and other characters will appear and blossom and become more than their original intent.
Already, last week a card that basically read “Rumours of event reach location” has sparked the reintroduction of a character that hasn’t appeared for several books and who I thought wouldn’t make an appearance until a couple of books in the future if at all. The scene is nothing like I originally thought it would be.
The landmark on the map is still the same, it just looks different from what I thought even up until the day before I started writing it. And it’s better than I thought it would be.
It’s good to be back writing a first draft. Getting to explore Vasini again and finding out where this map I’ve created for myself actually leads.
In other news, I’m now proofreading Tales From Vasini III, which means that in the not too distant future I might have some idea of when it will be released into the world.
