I swear I am trying. I am truly trying to get through enough edits to feel like I have a handle on this draft by October 6th. What’s that? You want to know why October 6th? Well. October 6th – October 8th is the 21st Annual James River Writers Conference, and I have the opportunity to speak with an agent about my book. Yes, an actual, real life agent. My goal is to give a blurb that makes sense in which I sound like I am the one that wrote this book and not a 5th grader giving a book report about a book I only read to page 42. In order to reach this goal, I need to know this story from start to finish, and the story I wrote has become something else.
I managed to get through 100% of the draft and break it down into the Save the Cat! beats. Does my story line up with the expected beats? Not exactly. Some areas are pretty close and others are way off the rails. However, I did it.
Next, I am using Plottr to dive deep into the beats. Plottr lets me use a timeline to see scene order with lots of additional tags and details. It’s taken me a minute (or 60) to get the feel for Plottr, but after a few YouTube tutorials, I think I have it down. I am stopping for the day while I have a goal so the next time I will know exactly where to start.
Wendy Crafton Writes 