Writing Wednesday - Seven Deadly Murders Redo

With November traditionally being a 'novel writing month, I am participating in The Rough Draft Challenge sponsored by Sarra Cannon. 

I have quite a bit written on the story already. However, I have been very unhappy with how the story was going. After mulling over the situation and the story for months, I realized I was trying to put too much into the story. Subplots are fine and enhance a story. However, I was trying to subplot my subplots!.

Anyway...

Last week, since I had several days off, I sat down and in a couple of hours walked through my existing notes on the novel and made a roadmap of the story. It is basically a scene-by-scene progression of the story. 

Besides the scenes, I also noted the time between certain scenes and a couple of other notes on the story I wanted to be aware of. There is a secondary time line which will merge with the major time line, but that will be easy enough to slot in.

I feel really positive about what is up on the wall. I now have a path to follow and can basically now write the scenes since I know where it is going. This should give me a really good first rough draft in November!

Between now and then, I will go and reread what is already written, taking out the 'fluff' and seeing where I stand in relation to the overall outline. I think what I am going to do there is to print out what I have already written, cross out what I don't need and set up from there. I'll then 'archive' the old stuff and continue along the way.

So, I am feeling really good about how things are progressing. It felt really good to sit down and write out the plot line from start to finish and realizing I have (in my opinion) a fairly solid base. 

Now to drag out Anise Sweetgum and revisit her story!