31 August 2009

Editing Jesscapades, Part Five

And lo, we come nearly unto the end!

When we last left off, I had a shiny L4S outline of Jesscapades, just begging for me to start writing. Right?

Wrong.

**BEWARE SPOILERS IN THE IMAGES**

First of all, there were two very important things I had to do. Here's the first (click to embiggen):



Firstly, the different colours are the different POV characters.

The left hand column is the new, shiny plotline. The third column contained the original plotline, scene by scene, one line per scene. The reason lots of spaces are blank is because I've dragged them into the middle column. The middle column is my attempt to match up old, existing scenes, to new scenes. This was imperative in order for me to figure out exactly how much work I actually have to do to make what I have look like what I want.

Sadly, the blank spaces in the middle column are scenes I don't have an existing scene for, so there are a whole bunch of new scenes I need to write *cries*

In fact, there are 10 existing scenes that I won't be using at all (*sniff*), and I need to write 19 brand new scenes. This isn't all bad, since the outline has gone from 66 scenes to 71, so that's 5 new scenes right there. And some of the new scenes I can co-opt paragraphs here and there from other scenes.

So, old scenes now matched up with new, here's the next thing I did (again, click for bigness):


This is the left hand column again, but this time instead of colour-coding by POV character, it's coded by amount of work I'll need to do to get the scene up to scratch. And yes, there's a terrifying amount of red there.

The numbers down the side show the various values of each scene: red gets 4 time units, orange 3, yellow 2, and green 1, which translates to a red scene taking approximately 4 times longer to work on than a green one. The right-most column of figures is that translated to percentages, so that I can track how far I am through the rewrite - which, according to this lovely chart, will take 167 time units to complete.

Oi.

However, all of this done, scenes ordered and coloured and compared, I am now, at long last, finally, ready to start the actual task of rewriting.

And that, I think, is a good thing.

Well, it would be if I didn't have to start the book with three brand new scenes, because we all know how much I love drafting :S Argh!!

5 comments:

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

AAAAAAAAhhhh!!!! *hides eyes* you are a very brave reviser

Merc said...

Interesting... you're a lot more organized than I'll ever be. :D Good luck!

Danyelle L. said...

*wishes she could be so organized*

I feel your pain. I had to do this with Goose Feathers. Not fun, but worth it in the end. It would have been nice to have pretty pictures to go along with the work. :)

PS Thanks for the award. :D

Michelle D. Argyle said...

So organized and pretty!!!! You know you've already inspired me. I did my own pretty thing like this, and it's so brilliant. Has helped me out a ton~

Amy Laurens said...

Tricia - No, just an anal-retentive one O:) I can deal fine with other people being organised. I really can't deal well with myself not being organised :D

Merc - ditto the above. If I'm not organised, I tend to panic :D

Dany - Pictures are fun :D I think they're at least a third of my incentive, sometimes o.O :) (And you're welcome)

Glam - *grin* Then we are at least mutually inspired :D hehe. Pretty shiny organised goodness.... *slips off dreamily*

O:)

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