It’s time to get back to The Storyteller! If you can remember back that far, I did indeed say I was going to take two months off, however, I neglected to take into account how long a month is. The story is sufficiently rested.
I am excited to continue working out my writing process through actual action. This story, come what may of it, is probably going to be the single most important novel in my discovery of said writing process.
Right now, the rough plan I have for The Storyteller is:
1) I’m going to read the story through once and just see what’s there and how it flows when I’m doing nothing but reading.
2) I’m going to then read it a second time and take notes on what is there and what isn’t there that I would like to be there.
3) I’m planning on making a post-it note outline with colors for different plot threads and things that need to be added so I can see everything at a glance and move things around at will.
4) Go in and write the bits that are missing and I know there are a lot of them. This will probably constitute a large chunk of the planned six months. Move around my post-it note outline (pino!) as I write to keep an eye on where I’m going and to see whether it is ‘complete’ as a story. The end of this step happens when all of the pieces are in the story, such that it makes sense in a read-through from beginning to end. (I’m going to put four months here, but this will likely change.)
5) Send story out to beta readers and get feedback.
6) Run through the whole story multiple times, tweaking and changing as I go, possibly focusing on certain aspects of the story such as plot, character, etc (Similar to my plan at the beginning of the year) to further hone stuff.
I’m not putting any time restraints on here and probably won’t until after step 2, at which point I can reevaluate where I think I am. I need to keep reminding myself that my process is my own. I need to stop getting bogged down with the process of others.
