The Unravelling

Three reasons why writing is like sewing:


1) You create something from nothing, building and shaping raw material into something beautiful and useable.

2) You have to have experience working from the pattern before you can create your own patterns. You need to know how a pattern is actually supposed to go together before you can branch out and make a different, new one.

3) You can be creating along, thinking everything is going swimmingly, and all of a sudden realise: Things Aren't Right.


There are four key types of 'As in Sewing, So In Writing' mistakes.



A. The Birdsnest Bobbin. This is where you are sewing along and it looksl ike everying is going fine, but then everything comes to a crashing halt. The machine seizes up, and if you try to go any further you'll snap the thread. Everything looks okay on top, but when you look underneath, there's a whole birdsnest of thread. This usually happens because you didn't thread the machine properly (or because it unthreaded itself when you weren't looking; sewing machines are pains in the butt for that).


How is this like writing? Because if your story is not threaded properly, if it's not set up right to begin with, things can very rapidly come to a crashing halt, and if you try to write any further, you'll just break something and make it worse.



B. Running Out of Thread. I don't know if any of you out there are sewers (! seamstresses? O:)), but if you are, I'm quite sure you'll have had the experience at some point of sewing along, probably down a very long seam, thinking everything is going well, only to find at the end that you only actually sewed the first third of the seam because the bobbin ran out of thread. o.O All the stitches you've done that look neat on top have nothing to hold them in, and they unravel almost straight away.


In writing, this is when things are going along swimmingly and think it's all fantastic, until you get to an endpoint and you stop and reassess, and realise that you've just written 30 pages of fluff. None of it's actually relevant to your story, to your plot or direction - it's all tangentenal, and there's nothing to anchor down those threads that look pretty, but will never be able to hold any weight.



C. Catching the Fabric in the Seam. This often happens when you have a tricky seam to sew (like the circular seam on those jolly hats). Things are going fine, you finish the seam off, it holds together nicely, but then you take it off the machine and have a close look and realise that the wrong part of the fabric has gotten caught up in the seam. The only solution here is to unpick that part of the seam and sew it again.


In a story, maybe you put a scene in the wrong place. Maybe some dialogue got caught up somewhere and actually needs to come later. Maybe a subplot was introduced at the wrong point, or a key plot point happens too early or too late.



D. Sewing the Wrong Seam. This is probably the most frustrating mistake. Maybe you read the pattern wrong - or maybe you read it right, but you just picked up the wrong piece of fabric at the last minute. You sew the seam and it looks fantastic; it's the neatest seam you've ever sewn in your entire life! And then you realise: you just stitched the left sleeve with perfect precision into the neck hole. o.O Not so helpful.


This is when you have perhaps stitched the wrong back half onto the front half of a novel. Or maybe a character has had a personality transplant and become someone you loathe. Or when you realise the entire point of your novel as it stands is, just by way of example and not at all stealing examples from my own experience *coughcough*, Revenge Is Good, Please Take It. Urgh.



In Jesscapades at the moment I haven't been progressing terribly quickly. It occurred to me recently that I have managed to make most of these mistakes. The writing came to a crashing halt and I knew if I continued I'd break more things than I fixed. So I went back to the last place the seams were holding together, and had a good look around. I realised that the steps I had the characters taking from that point onwards were not logical at all; they were stupid and plot-serving and not all all in character.

So this week, I'm unravelling. I'm unpicking the seams of my story to uncatch all that fabric that got caught up where it shouldn't be; unstitching things that were stitched together in the wrong place, and rethreading the story so it has a stronger foundation to build on - because once I get these first few chapters right, I know the middle is going to be so much stronger :o)

And yes, as those of you following the insanity on twitter know, I made ten of those witches hats over two nights. And I mean nights: 11pm - 3am on puppy watching duty o.O They were, believe it or not, for the school swimming carnival O:) :D

Just Plain 'Break'

Not a hour after I penned yesterday's post on Monday afternoon, I slammed headfirst into a large and very painful brick wall. Okay, I had an ending to my book, I had large portions of the plot worked out, things came to a conclusion...

But it was a conclusion I hated. Somehow, the entire moral of the story morphed to: Don't kill innocents, but please do commit murder for revenge.

Don't know about you, but that's not exactly what I wanted out of this story. Not quite o.O And because of this now-twisted moral, the MC became someone I hated. How could she do this? All those morals she stood up for, all the right she fought for - she's just going to let it all go at the end and ignore everything? Um, excuse me?

I hated her. I fell into a bitter pit of despair, and was quite literally ready to rip the plot cards that lay on the floor in front of me up into little tiny shreds.

I didn't. See me be good.

See, this exact thing happened with the last novel: I had an idea of where I wanted to go with the novel, but the story became such that in order to get there, my protag had to turn into a Not Nice PersonTM. So I scrapped The Project, because with that story, I couldn't see my way out of it, and there wasn't enough else that was compelling about the story to make me want to try.

This time was different. This time it's Jess. I loved this story. And somewhere in there still was a kernel of the story I'd wanted to write - and I was determined to find it.

I spent the whole day being miserable, which was a great end to my long weekend, and didn't sleep much at all on Monday night. But sometime during my tossing and turnings, an answer came to me. I'm not going to plot-spoilerise here, but besides the fact that Jess's motivation for her 'final attack' at the climax has changed (yay, no more revenge attacks!), I can show you this.

This is what my novel currently looks like, as plotted out to the end:



The red and blue are the two MCs, and the pink and orange are the two subplots. As you can see, it's quite a mess - unbalanced, messy, and random.

Here's what I've realised (in a *facepalm* moment) what it ought to look like:



Doesn't that look much better?

So, after several heart-stopping, heart-wrenching, sleep-depriving hours on Monday afternoon, I think I can say I'm back on track, and raring to go again. I still need to finish the darn draft, which is as messy as the first diagram, which makes me want to tear my hair out, but I can at least now look forward to the pleasure of knowing what I need to fix in revision - and that nagging sense that something was wrong has finally left me, and I'm free to write. :)

Following a Weathered Outline...

So, you'll have to excuse the multitude of puns in today's title O:) Puns, you ask? What puns? Ahh. Bear with me but a moment, and I shall reveal all *looks wise and knowing*

Firstly, following: I'm sure a lot of you are aware, but blogger has developed this nifty little concept called 'following', whereby you can elect to follow a blog and thence have it appear on your blogger dashboard, conveniently letting you check all blogs you're following at once, and see at a glance who's updated and who hasn't. Consider this your official *poke* to FOLLOW MEEEEEEE! :) There's a handy link over there in the sidebar, right below Works In Progress, if you'd like to become a follower.

(As an aside, don't you just love how secret-cult-shall-rule-the-world that sounds? Hello, everyone, this is my blog, and these are my followers......)

Next, weather. This is completely unrelated to the blog, but it's just so jolly unfair I feel compelled to mention it. I live in Australia. AUS-TRA-LI-A. It is November. NO-VEM-BER. This, dear weather gods, means it's nearly Summer. This is NOT the appropriate time to start dumping the best snow of the year. \:|

Right. Which brings me to outlines, and the following of them :D As every tactician knows, no plan survives first contact with the enemy; and as every writer knows, no outline survives first contact with the story.

When I started writing The Project, I had a vague idea of where it was going, and that was all. It didn't matter too much: the entire object of writing it was an exercise in plot, in learning to race from one troublesome situation to whatever problem my muse came up with next. But there came a point when the time travel and multiple subplots got the better of me, and I outlined. Just one sentence per scene, in a pretty little table in a word document.

It was good enough to get me through to over halfway, but naturally, it couldn't remain intact. So, when I decided to start rewriting TP in order to get the characters right, since I knew the plot and twists etc, I broke out my outlining tools to give the book a bit more oomph, and to make sure I had everything covered. Hence, it's my weathered outline ;) It's weathered the storm of most of a first draft, and is still a bit rough (weathered, ha ha) around the edges! Gwa! *is proud of puns* O:)

This is the complete outline:



Yeah, I know, you can't see a thing. If you could, though, what you'd see would be something like this:



That's nice, you say, but what does it all mean? Well, each card has a sentence on it (roughly; work with me here ;)) that corresponds to a scene. The letter in the circle at the top right of each card is the POV; the green stripe or lack thereof at the top left indicates to me which timeline the card is in (past, present or future). The colours down the right hand side indicate which plot threads the scene relates to, selected from the following:



Don't know if you can read that or not, but it basically says pink is developing sympathy for the girl, blue is solving the mystery (the main thrust of the story), yellow is revealing past events, orange is a third party subplot, and purple is 'Angela', the second POV character.

So, why did I go to all the effort of writing this down on cards, and colour-coding, etc? Isn't that an awful lot of work for something that - again - may not survive first contact?

Well, yes... But no. Writing out the outline like this* has lots of advantages. Firstly, there's the visual aspect - you can see everything at once, all out in front of you, and it's dead easy to pick up the cards and shuffle them around and see what happens to your timeline - and your story. All sorts of connections can be formed that you'd never have found otherwise.

Secondly, you can immediately identify the weak spots in the plot: sentences that drag, that have no conflict, or that are just plain boring are usually indicative of scenes that do the same. Conflict is the meat of any writing, and this is a quick way to spot places you might be lacking.

Thirdly, the whole colour-coordination thing: subplots. Unless you're writing YA, MG, or really short books, you absolutely need subplots. My current wip, Jesscapades, has no less than 11 plot strands at present. And the easiest way I've found to keep track of them all is colour coding. Once again, it's a visual thing: you can see it all there in front of you, and you can tell at a glance how much of the book is devoted to which plot threads, places where perhaps you've ignored a thread for too long, and places where you might be able to introduce a new one - or even ways which you can combine threads if you have too many for the book you're writing. It's also a great way to make sure you've tied up all your threads. That's what the big black dot on card 35 above means: I've tied off plot threads pink and purple.

Not everyone likes outlining, and most outlines end up looking nothing like the finished book. But that doesn't mean there's no use for them, as I hope I've demonstrated. And not only can you use this to do a check of how you're going, getting the cards out and shuffling them around can be a great way to unstick yourself if the story feels like it's getting out of hand; a handful of white squares seems so much more manageable than nebulous story concepts colliding in your head.

So, do you outline? Why or why not? How far do you go? And would you ever consider this method?

* If you're a pantser, who absolutely cannot outline before writing, consider using this method for editing and revising instead. If you're an outliner, you can use this method then too.

My Journey Through the World of Writing

First off, sorry for the missed post on Friday. I do my best to post regularly, but sometimes uni just leaps up to bite, and I miss one :( Hope you all still love me ;) Still feeling the after-effects of the uni-bite, today's post is slightly rambly - but somewhere, if you look hard enough, there is a point. I promise :o)

My brain regularly takes random sidetrips in terms of its thinking process, and this weekend has been no different. It's something the Muse has always done - but the difference is now I find myself couching these sidetrips in the language of blog posts. I think I'm addicted* O:)

Somewhat happily for you, this week's random sidetrip was actually relevant to this blog, and also to something I've stumbled across in a couple of places recently.

Novels. How did you get into writing them? What have you learned from each attempt? When did you start thinking seriously about writing? How have you grown since then?

It's a pretty all-encompassing topic that my Muse stumbled upon, but it got me thinking (odd, that - a thought process got me thinking, my, my...).

My first 'serious' attempt at writing was back in year ten. A friend of mine was also interested in writing, and together we began planning a fantasy story. This was in the days before I'd heard of urban fantasy, so when I finally drafted some actual writing for this story (rather than the months and months of playing and planning), the beginning included not one but two prologues. Oh my.

It was a lot of fun, though. It hooked me for the first time on worldbuilding and character development, and there are three characters in particular from that first attempt that I'm not giving up on: they'll get their own story one day, by hook or by crook.

But high school ended, the friend and I went our separate ways, and aside from a creative writing class in college (years 11 and 12 for the foreigners among you) nothing much happened on the writing front.

I started uni (university, since it's come to my attention that US of Aians have no clue what 'uni' means ;)), and life went on.

Until said friend returned from a year overseas, and began classes at the same uni. All of a sudden we had an excuse to be in the same place at the same time, and the topic of conversation turned naturally to writing.

It turned out that both of us had kept our first story in the back of our minds all those years, and had somehow and subtley added to it, growing it, until we ended up with two very different versions. In talking, however, we realised that the two could be enmeshed and make a very pretty trilogy (yes, this was still pre-urban fantasy days O:)). And thus began my second serious attempt.

This time, we actually got around to thinking about some plot. There were no prologues, although there was a Prophecy and a Chosen One, and not-one-but-several invented languages that all used shiny (and random) punctuation marks to Make Them Look Pretty.

We even wrote a couple of scenes for it.

I took another writing class, this time at uni... And I was hammered. Sure, I could string words together into pretty sentences, but I had absolutely no concept of structure, of plot or pacing - or, to the teacher's chagrin, how to write a short story.

But I was learning - and as people often find when they're doing collaborative work, my friend and I were learning at different rates. She had other priorities, other distractions... And it got to the point where, awful though it feels to write this (friend-who-happens-to-read-this-blog, forgive, forgive!), I outgrew our work together.

That is what I like to think of as my 'Act 1': the setting up of my interest in writing, where the conflict and character are introduced, and where we end by raising the stakes: if I was to continue writing seriously, it would now have to be alone.

Luckily for me, it was about that time (now the beginning of 2007) that I stumbled upon Holly Lisle's site, and devoured everything she had to say about the writing life. Not long after I found Critique Circle, and fell into a lovely group of friends, though not the friendship group I've ultimately formed. And on top of this, my Dad, whom I regard as conservative and sensible above all else, told me that I ought to "take it from a disillusioned forty-something year old": life is too short to waste doing something we only like. If I wanted to write, then by frollygop, I ought to get out there and write.

And so began Act 2: I started a novel of my own. It suffered from a host of diseases, most pertinent of which was the habit of skipping from one point of action to the next without down time, or explanation, or worldbuilding. I'd been duly warned about the infamous info-dump, and avoided it well - only to swing too far in the opposite direction.

But it was encouraging to know that I could write chapters, in the plural; previously my highest word count for anything, academia included, was about 3,000. And the crits were encouraging, if firm.

I took a second creative writing course at uni. This enforced a break from the novel, as I found I couldn't work on it and stories for class as well, but this was probably for the best: there were too many problems I needed to sort out before I continued with the novel draft.

I acquired some vague notions of structure from the class, though ended up with the same final grade as last time.

And then the Big Thing happened. It was November; it was NaNoWriMo.

It was a week before, in fact, and I was lamenting on Critique Circle both my lack of an outline, and my lack of time to outline - and, I suspect, my lack of ability to outline.
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And my hero stepped in. At that time, dear Merc, you were one of the 'big names', of Critique Circle in my eyes, and to have you not only encourage me to do NaNoWriMo, but also offer to write and in fact write an entire synopsis for me... Words fail me. Absolutely.

And so, armed with a plot and mountains of encouragement cookies, I attempted NaNo. I discovered the horrors of first drafts - but I also discovered that I was writing something that people liked. People enjoyed my story, and wanted more. And so I kept writing. I fell majorly behind, but somehow, someway, in a manner that is still a mystery to me, at the end of the month I pasted in my story, and up came the magic words: Congratulations! You've won NaNoWriMo!

The novel wasn't finished, and it took two more months to push through the final third of the book, but I did it: I finished a novel. Me. Little old me, with one novel down and under the belt. It had a mess of holes and needed serious revising, but as I read over it I realised - I can fix this. And I set about to do so.

I started a new novel at the same time, excited to be starting it with an outline, and I got to 10 chapters - and I stopped. I hit a wall, and realised that my first ten chapters were fluff, and that the story actually started at chapter 11. Man, was that depressing.

It was around this time, lamenting my inability to write story stories (they always turned novel on me), another dear friend took me under her wing. I was going to write a short story - one per week, in fact, no less, barring death, illness, or an overdose of Life. And lo, behold, I did - and I learned Structure. I could write a short story.

One of them turned novel on me... And I ended up with my second project: The Project. It became an exercise in plot, learning how to race from one cliffhanger to the next... And it worked. People read it; people liked it.

And I realised that I could do it.

And this is where I am now: still in Act 2, but happy to be here. I'm editing The Project, and I'm remembering how much I love editing right now. I'm preparing for NaNo, rather terrified once again to have no plot - but I know I can do it. I can do it because I have awesome friends to cheer me on; but I could do it alone, if I had to.

I'm growing, I'm learning - and today, for the first time in two weeks, I'm writing.


* Evidenced by the fact that two weeks ago, a particularly stressful time at uni, saw my lying awake all night one night worrying about blog posts. Argh! Why?!

Story Elements #3: Scenes

It came to my attention the other day that those things we writers like to call 'scenes' are neither as well-known nor as straight-forward as I'd always believed. And since they fit nicely into my Story Elements series, I thought this would be a lovely opportunity to explore my opinion on them :) Prepare yourselves...

Defining Scenes

There are lots of definitions of the word 'scene', but for the sake of brevity and focus, here are the more relevant ones.

Wikipedia:
In TV, stage plays and movies a scene is a part of the action in a single location.
In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama.

TME:
Continuous block of storytelling either set in a single location or following a particular character.

Screenwriting Info:
Action taking place in one location and in a distinct time that (hopefully) moves the story to the next element of the story.

Film/Editing Terms:
Action that occurs in one location at one time.

Screenwriting Glossary:
Continuous action with or without dialogue that takes place in one setting.

Good definitions - but note that they're all from screenwriting. Mostly, this doesn't make a difference, but let's throw in an author's definition here just to round things out.

Holly Lisle:
The simplest definition of a scene is that you've written a scene when something important changes. See her article on scenes and scene creation here.

Which means scenes can be tiny, or massive, depending on the scale of the change you're focussing on.

Scenes often line up with chapters, but they don't have to - and you can have multiple scenes in a chapter, but not multiple chapters in a scene. It's a complete, discrete unit, an event, an episode... A scene :)

However, when I said this to my friends the other day, one of them came right back with:

Oh yes you can [have multiple chapters in a scene]! I just ended Chapter three with Rick peering through a window and someone hits him from behind. Chapter 4 starts with him reacting to the blow and finding out what happened. Same scene. Different chapters. And a coat hanger in the middle.

The question is, does a chapter break equal a scene break? I think so, because it's the change that you're focussing on in the scene that determines where you break the chapter. It all depends on where you cut and why, because this will depend on what change you're trying to show. *tries to think of an example*

A guy comes into a restaurant. That's a change - he's moved positions. If that's the important change, then you could just end the scene there, and start a new scene for the next change that you wanted to show.

If, however, he comes in, and the waiter says something which irritates him, and he gets angry - maybe the change the scene is supposed to show is his change of emotion, rather than his change of position. In this case, the scene will be longer, and will be one scene even if it includes the same things that the previous two scenes would have shown... Yes? It's about figuring out which change you're emphasising.

A great resource that really helped me get my head around the whole business of what makes a scene - and more importantly, what makes a good scene is Holly Lisle's How To Write Page-Turning Scenes. It's a quick read, and for me it was well worth the money to figure out how to tell before writing which ideas had potential to become scenes, and which didn't. It's a great refresher on types on conflict, too. However, I've always struggled with structure (versus character), so if you're pretty confident you know how to plot and structure, it may not be so useful.

Analysis of Openings

Meant to do this at the end of last week, but alas, it is week two of uni and already I have an essay due. But better late than never.

The format I'm using here is totally theived from Liana Brooks over at Write or Right? - with her permission, naturally ;)

This was my opening:

"Heather, you have something of mine."
I stared at my brother. I had no idea what he meant.
He stared back in silence. The years hadn't been kind to him, that much was certain. I pursed my lips at his dark, sunken eyes, unkempt hair, and too-skinny frame. Dirt clung to his shirt, and his shoes were scuffed and nearly worn through at the toes.
I frowned. "Really, Andrew. It's nice to see you and all, but" – I glanced up and down the perfectly manicured street – "did you have to show up like this?"
He shrugged and maintained his stare. "You have something of mine."
I suppressed a sigh. Better let him in before the neighbours see. I stepped aside and jerked my head.
His eyes widened briefly, but he stepped inside eagerly enough. I wondered how long it had been since he'd been somewhere warm – his hands were mottled with cold.
He hovered in the hallway, and I stepped past him and led the way to the kitchen. "Drink?"
He nodded. "Something warm would be great."
He slid onto one of the stools that edged the bench, and I turned away to rummage for the mugs and hot chocolate. "So," I said, trying to keep my voice casual. "What brings you here?" I hadn't seen him in what, ten? Eleven years, now? As I turned, mugs in hand, I caught his eye. I inhaled, hit by the intensity of his gaze.
"You have something of mine."

Comments: 26, if we discount my two :)

Hooked? 24 plus one maybe. Hoorah, there is hope! :)

Problems Cited By Critters:
* Brother is more interesting that Heather
* Lots of people wobbled at the 'hands mottled with cold' bit
* Lots of sentences start with 'he'
* Issues with Heather's actions - why does she invite him in instead of just asking what he thinks she has?
* Too many repetitions of "You have something of mine." - makes him sound robotic.

What I Can Fix:
* Both characters need a major overhaul. I know this.
* The cold hands can easily go, and sentences can be reworded to avoid 'he'

What Won't Change:
* I seriously doubt she'll just confront him on the doorstep. I still don't know her very well, but I know enough to know that that's a conversation she's NOT going to have in public ;) Besides, if she did, it would ruin the plot %-)

So, the biggest thing that needs working on here is the characterisation, which ought to iron out interest issues and also quirks in their mannerisms, such as Heather inviting him in, and him being so repetitious (or not, depending on how his character turns out).

For a long time I've been a character-focused writer, and have struggle a LOT with plot and structure. When I started writing this, it was an exercise in Making Things Happen - in plot. Consequently, the characterisation is very hazy - it seems that at the moment I can work on one or the other, but not both.

But that's okay. I can clear that up in revisions, and this novel is teaching me a whole new way of writing - and that I /can/ plot, and structure, and have coherency result :)

Overall, I'm pretty stoked with the high proportion of positive comments, and can't wait to finish this dang draft so I can get to revising.

Of course, the fact that I discovered some rather interesting details about Heather and Andrew's past two days ago has nothing to do with it O:)

June in Review

So, happy July everyone! Already - can you believe it? I'm not sure I can. The year is half over, and it feels like it's only just begun.

Anyway. What did I accomplish in this last month of the first half of the year? Let's have a look:

* Finished 1 short story, Not Fantasy. Would like to have done more, but that's okay. It's been a busy month.
* Made two submissions, SFB and Shoe. SFB required MASSIVE rewrites to get it to a sub-able stage, and I'm awfully proud of how it's turned out :)
* Very, very nearly made my goal of 15k of writing, almost all of which was done on The Project.
* Outlined a story that's been bouncing around for a while, temporarily titled Fairy Tale Ending.
* Finally, after much struggle and heartache, pegged down an outline for The Project. Am immensely happy about this.
* Began a new play, Where Your Treasure Is.

As for the year as a whole, I'm rather proud of the work that I've done so far. I think I've come quite a long way from the writer I was at the end of December - some of the highlights being the completed first draft of my first ever novel, To Be An Evil Overlord... and my entry into the world of submissions - thus far I've made 5 submissions of plays and short stories :)

I've learnt important things about structure, I'm slowly learning to pare back my overwriting, and I've managed to write more than one short story that has not only stayed short, but that I'm actually quite proud of. My total word count for the year so far is nearly 74,000 words, which is fast approaching last year's total of 102,000, which included 50,000 for nano in November. I've got plans for Nano, outlines for novels, I'm learning to recognise which stories will work and which won't, and I've discovered that I really do have something to say after all - to which end I've started and been running with reasonable success (I think ;)) this lovely blog (yes, despite the archive record, this blog was only started at the very beginning of the year).

So, what would I like to achieve in the second half of the year?

* 2 submissions per month, which is what I've so far been achieving since I began submitting in late April.
* Finish and complete at least one revision of The Project. I'm working on a TP blitz at the moment and hope to have a draft done in mid-August.
* Pare back my writing even more - stop over-writing - learn to recognise what is significant to the story, and what is not.
* Win Nano again. I'm fairly sure I'll be starting my mid-grade fantasy series for this, as it will be a big incentive to actually be able to complete a novel in under 50k.

I'm sure I'll think of more goals month-by-month, but for now, those are the big things.

And more than anything, I hope I'll continue to grow both as a writer and as a person, and that I will never lose sight of the bigger picture and what I have to say.

Thanks to all of you who read my often-rambly comments here. Your support and comments make this endeavour worthwhile :)

Photos

Finally, I have located batteries, the camera AND the card reader, all in the appropriate sequence and at about the same time.

Hence, I can now present for your viewing pleasure, pictures of my lovely post-it notes.

First, the BG plotting:






























And photos of the TBAEO edit...












































In accordance with Holly Lisle's One Pass Revision technique, green scenes need editing for flow etc only; yellow have at least one major plot point that needs to be changed/added/deleted; orange scenes need major reconstruction; and bright pink scenes are brand new scenes that need to be written.
Pale pink ones are ones that are in the first draft but that I think won't make it to the revised version.

As you can see, there is a surprisingly high proportion of green and yellow post-its, which I find extremely pleasing :) And the little tags are notes to myself - dialogue to include in scenes, thoughts about changing the order of scenes, etc.

I must say, this whole process has been an absolute blast :D Things like structure appear so much more easily when I have the frame of the first draft to work with, and drawing out and adding in subplot that relate to the themes of the novel - primarily acceptance, in the case of TBAEO - well, it's dead easy to see how they slot in when I see it all there in front of me like this :) I likes muchly.

As a final note, some observant readers may notice the gap between the rest of the TBAEO post-its and the final three green ones - that's because there's another scene before those that I wasn't sure if I wanted to change or not. I've decided now, and once I'm allowed to play again (once uni work is done) I'll dig out the post-its and fix up that final scene :)

Well, that's it for now. I hope this has been interesting for you! :)
Why can't first drafts be this fun?!