The Editing Process - How to make paper piles.

Finally dear readers
Today we begin chapter 2 of The Writing Book. Originally the plan was to achieve one chapter of Ms Grenville's book per month. I do not choose to dwell on how long it has actually taken. I suggest neither do you. Let's move onwards. By now you should have a nice sized pile of  little stories, snippets of action, conversations and dialogue or simply random thoughts. I know I do!


I would just like to take this moment to say how excited I am by my progress. Jax appeared out of nowhere, threw me full force into her world and then blew up the dock we were hanging out on. This character lept of the page and took over my life but now I have regained control. Although I can't wait to see where she takes me next I have asked her to be patient and first let me deal with Silken Threads.


Anyway...today will blossom from Kate Grenville's 'The Writing Book' exercise: Chapter 2 - Making Piles.


We will be exploring  my current WIP Silken Threads

The Big Cut
In chapter 2 Grenville asks us to make piles of all the exercises we have completed from Chapter 1. Now I have done this with Jax and set them aside. Seeing as I am now back on track with Silken Threads I decided to continue forward from this point, and seeing as I have 100,000 words already, I figured pile making was as good a place as any to start.

It has been painful, it has been wicked and  surprisingly, it has been inspirational. Although I reached a devastating revelation a few weeks ago, where I thought Silken Threads was a no-hoper, I have been given a new lease of life and I am surging ahead.

In three weeks I have cut the MS to pieces. Literally, I printed it out, took out some scissors and started hacking. It was cathartic. What I ended up with was not, as you may be now imagining, a pile of shredded paper, but five neat character profiles and the idea for six interconnecting novellas!

I know right?
So I have my piles, now what do I do with them?  Next Grenville suggests looking at the similarities in the text, in other words, seeking out the underlying themes. Seeing as I am working with an almost complete manuscript, my themes are pretty well established, so instead I broke down the entire manuscript into individual scenes. Yes, I did that.

I have 211 individual scenes!
You would think that is a lot of action. Amazingly I found my first big problem - it's not.
A large portion of the scenes are inactive and do not move the plot forward - this in itself is a huge revelation, but of the good kind! At last I have somewhere to start!

The next step...
Now that I have these piles (and large gaping holes in the plot!) Grenville suggests I work out some sort of order: to arrange what I do have in a way that allows the underlying themes to shine through. Taking a deep breath, I am now about to plunge myself into the crazy, chaotic world of PLOT MAPPING. Yep, I going to get out my sticky notes and my markers, I'm going to set up my pretty pink pin board and I am going to create an ARC to be reckoned with.

I will be back sometime in the not so distant future to report back - if I don't resurface sometime in the next week, please don't panic, I am probably just getting my groove back!
copyright 2011, TBell