Post-Its & a blank wall -- a writer's best friend

This weekend was the final push to get enough of the plot for Bewitched & Betrayed worked out so I could jump back into writing Chapter 2. I did something I hadn't done in years -- post-it notes and a blank wall. It worked like a charm. (I'll see if I can remember to take a pic of the wall tonight and post it here tomorrow.)

I was having two problems: the book was just too big, and I couldn't wrap my head around everything at once. So I put each character's name on a post-it and arranged them in categories: main characters, good guys, villains, and the people who you're not gonna be so sure about. (Good or evil? Uh dunno. ) Then I did a post-it for each element in the main plot, and one for every element in any and every subplot. Then I started to arrange them in sequence -- the main plot was in order of occurrance on the top row, subplots on the next row, elements that needed to be woven in throughout the story on the third row, and the things that just didn't quite fit below that. When I did this, it was obvious what fit and what didn't.

And the biggest revelation of all -- what I thought was one book is actually two books. It's twins!

I'll leave the post-its up and keep adding to them as I write. I can HIGHLY recommend this as a way to see where you are, where you're going, and what you need to do to get there.

Happy Monday -- do what you can to make it a good one,
Lisa