Folks, it has been a TIME for me the past few months. In good ways, with the Good Kind of Busy, but still: A TIME. And a big part of that is the cat-and-chainsaw juggling that is finishing the draft of PEOPLE OF THE CITY, where I have several plot threads from four different series converging and paying off, and that has been a huge thing, let me tell you.
I’m honestly so glad I’m using Scrivener for this.
One of the things that I LOVE about Scrivener is how painless it is to move scenes around. When you’re juggling a bunch of converging plot lines it can be VERY helpful to try different orders of scenes for maximum impact. Like, you plot it out in outline, figuring out all the What that needs to happen. But then once it’s written, and you’ve got a sense of the scenes, how they each rise and fall, the lengths of each one, the rhythm of the chapters, it’s fun to play with how that works. Do you group three disaster scenes together, so things fall-fall-fall in each bit through the chapter? Or push the disaster of one plot line to the next chapter while bringing in the hope from another: fall-rise-fall. Which one is the best end-of-chapter kick?
Plus I can see the word count of each scene, each chapter, and get a sense of how shuffling the scenes around affects the pacing, keywords to show me which characters and threads I’m moving, how each plot thread is moving forward.
I can’t imagine writing a novel like the one PEOPLE OF THE CITY is shaping into without these tools. SO VERY HAPPY.
In other news: SHIELD OF THE PEOPLE comes out this month. AND I’ll be at New York Comic Con this weekend and World Fantasy Con next month. So things are not slowing down. Say hello if you can. Wish me luck.