The King Begins

As I'm going through my plot grid, I know something is missing in my story. I can feel it. So I started to draw. Now I haven't drawn for ages, but I think it's my new way to get unstuck from things. I have so much imagery floating around in my head, getting it down on paper makes it concrete and I see what is missing.

So here is a little plot preview: The king, having just escaped with his lizards, and a few flat men thrown in...


Click the drawing and it will enlarge in a pop-up.

Back to Plot

Today I started work again on the novel's plot. A few months ago I'd taped scraps of paper to my closet door and listed every main event in the novel. I ended up with hundreds of papers, lined up and scribbled on. Here's part of what I'm looking at now:


I left this behind while working on short story projects, and it's fun to come back to, although I'm often wondering what on earth I was talking about. For instance, a slip of paper reads: "Olander builds the Enchantment Box. He puts Grandpa George's name inside to test it out." And what happens? I can't remember. I hope to find the outcome on some other scrap of paper.

In the meantime, I'm going through the plot line and kicking out anything that no longer fits, filling in plot holes. To do this, I'm using a J.K. Rowling grid technique she showed off in a 60 Minutes interview (2002): Take a piece of lined spiral notebook paper, mark three columns- one for months, one for chapter title, and one for plot strand, adding in sub plot strands on the paper's back. We'll see how this works to organize the plot pace and events.