Identifying Plot Gaps in Your Novel

I’ve been continuing with my review of my draft novel. I fully believed I had completed it from a plot perspective. Much to my chagrin, a review for editing has shown a big gap in the story.

Here’s what happened.

As part of the review I have begun, I created a tally of the major plot beats using the MICE quotient approach. I couched these in terms of reader promises. Without giving spoilers, these notes looked something like this:

Promise: Elara resisting/overcoming Malachi’s spells and defeating him.Opens: Chapter 1Set-back: Chapter 6 — Notes on what the setback wasSet-back: Chapter 7 — Notes on how Elara is affected by set-backProgress: Chapter 8 — Notes on what the progress is.etc.Resolved: Chapter 29 — climax of conflict

Doing this for each of the main character arcs was beneficial, but it also identified one (so far) hanging plot line that never reached the “Resolved” state. Oops.

Not all bad…

Putting the effort into tracing these beats in a structured manner has not been just bad news from a story perspective. It has also gotten me re-engaged with the story and let me do some simple clean-up as I trace the tale and conflicts.

I’ve been using Ulysses, a Mac/Apple specific writing tool for this novel and must say some of its features make this tracing exercise very easy to perform. Each scene in the book is a separate “sheet” within a “group” in the overall book. This lets me insert or move scenes without worrying about cut/paste errors or formatting. This gives me great flexibility in moving scenes around while looking at the overall plot progression and structure of the tale.

Ulysses also has inline notes and other features that let me add items to fix or notes to myself as I’m performing my review prior to re-writing.

Starting my editing process with this tool, has made me a big fan of it. I’m sure there are features I’ll request or suggest, but for now, I think I’ve got a good workflow for writing, so that’s a win.

If any readers have alternative approaches to preparing for editing, please do share with a comment. In the meantime, I’ll get back to revising and editing.

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