A Writer's Retrospective: August 2021
It feels good to be able to lose myself in writing again….
Photo by Jorge Caetano on Unsplash
Buckling down isn’t quite as hard as I thought it would be—especially considering that I need to do it in both my personal and professional lives. It feels good to be able to lose myself in writing again….
Last Month's Action Items
May, June, and July retrospectives
I jumped right in and knocked these out in the first week. Also started writing this retrospective after the first full week ended. This bodes well for the future.
I hope I never have this particular complaint again.
Develop a comprehensive scene list
My scene list is 92% complete. 47 scenes have been fully planned; 14 scenes have been partially planned. That leaves me with a total of 61 scenes, which falls near typical recommendations of 50-60 scenes. Now that all 61 scenes have been summarized (with 14 lacking one or more of: purpose, high moment, or conflict(s)), I have reached a threshold where it makes sense to have the list revised, which fulfills the spirit of this objective.
Write the first 2-4 scenes
I have drafted parts of the first four scenes, but none of them are complete—I stopped writing them to tackle the scene list.
Writing
Scene list
Writing the scene list has been quite the adventure. If the outline is the bird’s-eye view of the journey, then the scene list is the view from the roof—high enough to see everything if you swivel around, but low enough to see individual people. In developing the scene list, I focused on three elements to accompany each scene summary: the purpose, the high moment, and the conflict(s). These characteristics are enough to guide me as I write prose for each scene.
The easiest part of the scene list was filling in the pivotal moments defined in my beat sheet; they were almost complete as-is. The toughest part of the scene list was filling in the gaps between the midpoint and the pivotal beats on either side of it: “Break into Act 2” and “All Is Lost.” A lot has to happen here; I had to make up some subplots and scenes as I went along—hoping they will be thematically appropriate in retrospect.
One resource that eased the process: the concept of scenes and sequels, as described by Randy Ingermanson. The substructure of each isn’t relevant to this iteration of the scene list—just the fact that a disaster (“scene”) should be followed by recovery (“sequel”). That simplified my choices just enough to suspend my paralysis. I filled in the rest of the list, one subplot at a time.
The scene list allowed me to see and address conspicuous pacing issues as they arose—nothing but a drag-and-drop problem, just as advertised.
Achievement Summary
*The scene list is over 90% complete with no scenes un-summarized; further delays serve no purpose.
Reflection
My scene list seems to have had the desired effect: as I filled in the spreadsheet, snippets of prose would occur to me. These spontaneous connections were the result I sought from using formal mind mapping software. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that realization.
Action Items
Write the first 4 scenes of “Iriseed: Shadow of the Anhuret.”
Outline “Iriseed (Book 2)”
Final Word
I had a lot of fun with the scene list. I lost myself in the work easily. Now, I’ve got just enough confidence to attack each scene with a sense of purpose and narrative direction—exactly what I hoped to glean from this exercise. We’ll see how well that pans out a month from now…. At least I have a 2000-word head start on this month’s prose.