After the deed is done

Like all authors, I sometimes wish I could write a book that only needed minor corrections, but it doesn't work that way. Or, if it does for those famed authors, it's only through sheer hard work and practice on the books that have gone before.

While I'm doing the re-writing and editing, I'm also post-plotting.

Post plotting is as it sounds, plotting after the book is written. Yeah, it's just askin' for trouble, but it works for me. Here's how I do it:

At the words 'The End', after the happy dancing is done, celebratory drinks downed, and hangover cure swallowed down with curses of 'why do I do it?', I get down to the hard work.

In a new document, I write Post-plotting and continue.

First is the central conflict, or theme, in one line. This is the post on which everything else hangs: Good versus Evil, the Quest, Vengeance, whatever works for you.

Second is the 'Reader's Promise'. What will keep your reader going? What promise have you made to them? That good will truimph, but only after some angst? That the quest will succeed, that vengeance will be had?

Third is the hard slog. Each scene must be summarized into a paragraph. Below that, I have Beginning, Middle, End (BME), Conflict and Crisis. I fill those in. Every scene must have it's own BME or it's not complete. Every page must have conflict - it's what propels the story, but each scene must have a major conflict. It doesn't have to be solved right there and then, but it has to be there. Finally, the crisis. One crisis follows another. It's what leads from one chapter to the next, what keeps your readers going.

Think of it as links in a chain. Each link is held together by the next, but the whole chain is only as strong as the weakest link. It's your job to make sure that the chain is as strong as it can be.

At the end of all this plotting, I can see where the story fails and correct it. From there, I go to the Check Points. This is a list of doubts, problems or questions that have arisen while red-pen editing. They are things like: Is this character necessary? Check world-building, would so-and-so really do/say/act this? Check character's eye colour, look at motivation, why would they care? Not enough description... etc. This is usually accompanied by coloured arrows stuck to the manuscript, from minor correction blue, to major re-write red.

Sometimes, it takes massive re-writing, but that's the price I pay for being an organic writer, and I doubt I could be any other kind.

There are no hard and fast rules of how you write something, it's an ongoing learning process to find what is right for you. Some are complex, some are straight forward, all are individual.

Every time I write, I learn something new and I hope, I put that new knowledge into practice. It's time consuming, but interesting. It appeals to my need to be constantly challenged and there is no more challenge than writing a book.