Plotting with Notecards

My only MayNoWriMo goal this year was to get a synopsis written for Maya #2.  The only catch:  I haven’t written the book yet.

While I haven’t had as much time to work on detailed plotting as I hoped, I have made some interesting discoveries.  The main color scheme for this book has been purple and blue (every book has a color scheme–The Bloodgate Guardian was orange and green).  No theme song yet.

I spent a lot of time developing Quinn and Tara.  I researched more about Ix Chel and Yum Cimil.  I had several scenes from an earlier draft of BGG, but I wasn’t sure if I could still use them.

The more cards I wrote up for the beginning sections, the more confused I got.  I couldn’t figure out how the new stuff I’d developed still fit with the old things I really wanted to keep.  I was getting bogged down in details, little scenes at the beginning that hid the main path.

The trick (this time) was concentrating only on the hero’s journey.  I wrote up the main event cards for each character without worrying about the other’s hero journey — and then I was finally able to figure out how they fit together.  I made cards for the key turning points/journey events in their own color — and then filled the character-specific stuff around them.  MUCH EASIER!

Tonight, I sat down with hot pink notecards and did the same general thing for the romance journey.  Instead of inciting incident — I have first meet.  I still need to work on these cards a bit more, but it’s really helping me figure out the arcs.

When I’m all finished, I’ll take a few pictures.