My Novel’s Timeline – in Full Color!
There was a day when I thought writing a novel would be easy. Ha! Once I actually started writing one, I realized how complicated it is. Plots entangle with subplots that entangle with characters and settings and… You get the picture.
Many of my writing friends have recommended Scrivener as tool for organizing a novel. I gave it a try, and while I liked it, I had a very hard time comprehending the full picture of my novel’s plot.
I’m very much a ‘draw me a picture’ kind of person. Those random Ikea instructions actually make sense to me! (Well, maybe not the one in the picture below…)
Do not try this at home.
Anyway, I’ve been looking for a way to organize my plot(s) for quite some time. I’ve tried note cards and colored pens and a white board, but none of that quite worked for me.
My novel in living color!
Enter my writer friend, W. G. Garvey (author of the military thriller, The Chain Locker.) When we were having coffee one morning, he showed me the spreadsheet he used to chart out his current work in progress. Using an Excel spreadsheet and plenty of flow chart images, he created a wonderful outline of his book. Brilliant!
So now, I’m doing the same thing, and it has helped me 110%. (Thanks, Bill…) I can see the entire novel at a glance which lets me understand how the threads work together. I have my own system for colors and box shapes and such, but it is so much easier than using note cards. Or even my ginormous white board (which got me many funny looks in Starbucks.)
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Hi Michelle, i have taken a sample of Straight to Hell 1. Sorry but i seldom spend money on books at this tine of year. They have to be really good as cash is sparse. But i punted up fir a vampire romcom recently (very cheap price) and have not regretted it. I write myself so i know it is goid to get sales but i think interest in the plot nd characters works just as well for me. Yes, i would like a few more sales but.... Such is life. I also write scifi and need to work on that but computer has packed up and am borriwing temporarily and the Works system, for some reason, is not working and my catalogue had not been transferred, sorry, i do gas. Evelyn
Apologies for my Ipad spelling. So etimes me, but often it is Ipad pre-empting me. It us better than t wa. Evelyn Steward
The devil's always in the details, isn't it? If you have a great idea to write a scene or something and your computer is acting up, that can be *so* frustrating! I think its great that you write sci fi as not many women do. I hope you get your computer problems figured out as it would be no fun at all to try and write on an iPad (at least not for me!)
Thanks for writing back. I can write poetry on this Ipad but have no idea how to transfer it to the computer, which as I said, is not mine. What I have to do is re-write onto the computer, which is quite a pain to do. I have someone who wishes to Beta read my novel byt no way at the moment, to transfer the work. The novel is complete baring finishing editing. As for the scifi, it should be a set of three books. The first one s complete, baring final editing, the second book is half written and i have part of the idea fir the third in the series. The setting,whilst not giving anything away, i have really not seen in ither books. Mind you, i have not read loads of scifi lately, so I could be wrong.Evelyn Steward. Ps. I have three shirt books on Amazon currently.
