Now that I have finished stuffing about with the deliberate distraction of theme changing on my blog, I must own up to not doing anything about outlining my novel, other than to stare blankly at the screen and open up one scene after another and just look at it. I even resorted to the treadmill one afternoon to avoid outlining.

I managed to write just 107 words in the last week. But my mind keeps insisting I have to do the outline.

So, starting last night, abandoning the electronic method, I followed the damned guidelines and wrote out an index card for each scene. Well, actually, I cut up A4 paper into 4 pieces and called that 4 index cards. 🙂 About 80 of them, written in longhand I will be battling to read. (I just cannot write neatly anymore due to stiff knuckles and a lack of co-ordination between my eyes, brain and pen.)

The first thing that became obvious to me, when I really thought about it, was I haven’t a point of view of the antagonist! How stupid is that? I have nearly every man and his dog having a view-point. I exaggerate. During the index card making, I did manage to prune out two character viewpoints, thus merging a couple of scenes.

And I can remember saying something the other day about bringing my novel back to a younger audience. PHOOEY! Not going to happen.

Now that I have the index cards done, I will try to place them within the three act structure; colour code each POV characters story arc and add scenes where they are wanting; find my plot and sub plot stories; and then write the FINAL scene. In fact, I imagine I might write at least three final scenes.

I’m happy I didn’t feel the need to ditch any scenes at all.  Every one already advances the story and serves a purpose. I feel my characters are showing their personalities.

I’ll be back to writing tomorrow. WIP = 83128 words.