Tag Archives: scene cards

#NaNoWriMo 2019 Day 5 – The Refusal

lamp ring

Continuing yesterday’s exploration of things that make me say, “What is that and what is it for?” I’m going to go with part of a lampshade? There’s gotta be a story as to why it’s in the lake, right? I hadn’t thought much about stagnant water on my abandoned property, but in this area, I can picture this image somewhere on the property in a low-lying area.

Day 5 (2017) is The Refusal

My protagonist definitely wants to refuse his call to adventure. How will he try to wriggle his way out of a request from the police?

#vss365: haze

He squinted, trying to cut through the haze. Movement caught his attention. A dark figure, growing larger, coming right at him, burst through the fog.

Today’s Simple Task

Think of your favorite scene from any movie or TV show. What makes it so great? Try to incorporate its strengths into a scene you write today.

This is a tough one for me. I’m not one of those people that has a favorite scene and memorizes it or anything. Hopefully something will come to me as I do my morning pages.

I took a look at Hot Fuzz and realized that the scenes I like the most are because of interesting edits and sound choices. I’ll be thinking about how I can use quick cuts, or stylized breaks to make my scenes more exciting.

Warm-up Exercise

Have your MC write his or her will or manifesto.

I think my antagonist would have some sort of manifesto, but my MC? Maybe when his mom died, he decided to write a will. I’ll play around with that.

Word Of The Day

eldritch: adj. eerie, other worldly, weird, spooky

Kirk hadn’t remembered a well on the property.  He pulled back the heavy, fir wood lid. Warm air rushed his face with an eldritch wail.

8 Action Verbs:

How they acquired the deed was never explained.

He could see now why they never built here. They only put things on top of this uninviting land.

She continued to stare directly into his eyes without blinking until he felt like he owed her something.

They earned it. They all did for taking away her boys.

He grouped the wrappers by color and only burned like colors at the same time. He imagined it made for less pollution from the smoke.  When he saw a rainbow, he thought that was because of his attention to detail.

It was never litigated in the courts because no one ever responded to the notices. No one bothered to even find out if the owners were still alive.

The art he had produced would have disgusted his parents, though as they aged they had probably discovered legal pharmaceuticals to add to their concoctions.

He had noticed the dung heaps upon his first visit, but had dismissed them as part of an abandoned property overtaken by nature. This, however, smelled fresh and was shaped like a cross. Kirk meant church, and because his Mom was always yelling random scripture about damnation, when he was younger mean kids called him church boy. Could this be a coincidence, his imagination?

Awesome Sentence Challenge

noun (or noun phrase) + verb (or verb phrase)

Write a page full of two word sentences. Try to convey as much information as possible with only two words by using specific nouns and strong, active verbs.

I really like this challenge. One of my goals for this draft is to use very specific nouns and verbs. I wrote a short story last year that was about an ornithologist and used specific names of birds, including the Latin names, to describe his world.

Since this novel takes place in Pierce County, WA, I want to use specific plant, flower and tree nouns that are in the area.  I also want to use specific anatomy nouns, specific tool and machinery nouns. A cat can be a Siamese or a Persian, a hat can be a beret to a fedora. So let’s see how I can use this to create interesting two word sentences that I can put in today’s scenes.

Shawna balked.
Oren spun.
Kirk paced.
Shawna bit.
Oren scratched.
Kirk lied.
Shawna stewed.
Oren left.
Kirk acquiesced.

Nature overcomes.
Ivy survives.
Nettles encroach.
Dandelions multiply.

Plums squished.
Pits stuck.
Robins feasted.
Crickets chirped.
Grasshoppers flit.

This is a great exercise. I could do this for hours. Short, precise sentences can help with pacing and emotion. The ones with my character’s names are the easiest to come up with, but I’m also enjoying the others. I think I’ll have some fun with my dictionary and other reference books.

Mapping the Hero’s Journey:

The refusal card: Wheel of Fortune
MC’s biggest fear about the Call to Adventure: Seven of coins
The responsibilities that can’t be abandoned. It is why he can’t refuse: Temperance

My interpretation: My MC’s refusal is rooted in his idea that his past was bad and by escaping it, he could change his fortunes. He fears that going back to where he grew up will turn all the good things he’s been able to build back to bad, that people may discover he’s a fraud and though he may be able to claw himself out again, just facing his past would be a big set-back. The reason he can’t refuse in the long run is because he knows he can’t avoid the truth anymore if he wants to find balance in his life he needs to recognize that what he sees as the opposing forces do not need to be at war with him. He will need to tread carefully.

Word Crawl

I found the Welcome to Nightvale crawl on the wrimo wiki. I remember enjoying it in the past. I thin I’ll do it today.

Preparing for editing along the way:

Inspired by Pat Verducci’s post Break Your Story- Index Card Style, I decided on how to color-code my scene cards. They are now color-coded by Story arc.

Blue: Main story line of my main character and his family present and past.

Red: My detective as she is working on the case.

Purple: Oren’s story

Yellow: My detective’s distractions in her personal life

Green: Other (& red herrings)- so far I used this for the opening scene because it establishes the setting, and the inciting incident, but the MC isn’t in the story yet.

Now that I’ve got my color-coding, I started my Story Grid using the same colors for the rows. I was very excited when I started doing this today. It feels good to be organized this year.

Master Class NaNoWriMo Group

Yesterday, after I finished my words, I thought I would head over to Master Class and watch some thriller writer videos while I worked on December’s planner pages. When I got there I was happily surprised to see that Danny Elfman has a Master Class. I was so excited that I started wandering around looking for the promo link to share it with everyone. While I was unsuccessfully doing that, I found that Master Class has created a NaNoWriMo Group. If you’re already enjoying classes on Master Class, you can cheer on other NaNo writers while you’re there. If you haven’t joined Master Class yet, I highly recommend it. It’s worth it for the Neil Gaiman class alone, but there are so many great classes to enjoy.

Happy Writing!

I hope you find some inspiration in these exercises. See you tomorrow.

Revising with scene cards

finished scene cards

Hello everyone. It appears my hiatus is over as I’m excited to get back to Experience Writing. But I’m not going to get back to the planner pages quite yet. While I took an extended break from blogging and social media, I finally found the excitement and energy I needed to return to revising my novel.

I will be following Janice Hardy’s “Revise Your Novel in 31 Days.” It looks like exactly what I need to stay motivated and do the work every day until it’s done. With that in mind, I read her workshop prep and set out for the store to pick up colored 3X5 cards. However, my local store had moved their office supplies and by the time I finished shopping, I had forgotten all about them.

Making scene cards – the design

I was positive I had some in the house somewhere, so I began an extensive time-suck search instead of just returning to the store. And I’m glad I did because I found a bag of paper supplies I had stashed and forgotten about. In this fabulous bag I had card stock and resume papers of many colors. They gave me an idea. I could make my own index cards with guiding questions already printed on them. This way I will know exactly what I am trying to do in each scene and be able to evaluate the scenes in the same way each time.

Making scene cards tools

Here’s what I did:

  1. I created a word processing file with the page in landscape and separated the page into four sections.
  2. I used the scene evaluation questions that Janice Hardy proposed in her prepping lesson “How to create an Editorial Map” and fit them with plenty of space to write answers  repeated in the four sections.
  3. I printed onto different colors of the resume paper
  4. I glued the resumed paper onto the card stock
  5. I cut them apart

And voilà! Custom scene cards.

 

Using the scene cards – they work!

Using the scene cards has helped me see my draft differently. I’m finally understanding the big picture edit process more clearly. As of today, I’m half way through my draft and I’ve already found:

  • Unintended POV shifts
  • Chapters that do not move the story along  (completely removed)
  • Places to split a chapter to increase suspense
  • Places to rearrange chapters
  • Places to add character development and tie plot lines together
  • An unnecessary character and a character that is necessary that needs more development

Here’s an example of a scene card I filled in:

filled in scene card

Things to remember when using scene cards

Chapters may and often do have more than one scene. Fill out a card for each scene. You may have many cards for one chapter.

I’m filling my cards out in pencil and it’s freeing. My original answers to my POV character’s goals and motivations are often not the correct answers after I think about it for a while. Also, I like to number the cards in the top right corner and as I cut scenes and rearrange scenes, I can easily renumber them.

Having several different color cards can be used as a great organizational tool. Because the novel I’m working on has different POV characters in different chapters, I’m using different colors to represent my POV characters. That way when I’m done, it will be easy to look at each of the different narratives by putting same color cards together. You may want to use different colors to represent your main plots and subplots, or different settings if you’re writing a story that takes place in three different countries for instance. There are a bunch of fun possibilities, but remember that the color of the cards is also a tool, so be consistent in whichever plan you choose.

Other Uses

I’m going to try using these scene cards to plan and outline my idea for NaNoWriMo this year. In the past, I haven’t been great with outlines, but that could change. Knowing my POV characters goals, motivations and conflicts for each scene ahead of time should make writing that draft a lot easier.

I also had some star-shaped paper, brads and stickers I look forward to adding to the cards in some way. If I have an epiphany, I’ll let you know.

I hope you find using scene cards as helpful and motivating as I do.

Happy Reading and Writing!