Index Cards and Ambiguity

Last year during my composition of Bryony, I moved to a system of using index cards to represent scenes. I went back to everything I did in 2008 and put one scene on each card. Then I created cards for everything I had been doing lately, and every scene I had conceived of for the future of the book.

The thing is, I've known from the beginning what some of the big "set piece" scenes are. I also know what some of the smaller moments should be. With the index cards, I've been able to first, put them in order, and second, figure out how to connect the dots. I've noticed that my writing tends to be the best when I can make the smaller moments do double duty as the connective tissue between big set pieces.

Let me define some terminology first. I think of a set piece as the big events that move the plot along. Bryony being set middling is a scene like this. Sure, there are some great character moments that come in along the way, but the purpose of the scene in the narrative is to accomplish that plot point.

The smaller moments are targeted character development. Usually, my index cards for these scenes involve listing the characters in the scene and how they're interacting. "Bryony meets Illiantine," for example. These two characters need to have met for later elements of the plot to work, so this small moment involves these two interacting for the first time.

On the card, I did not specify where they were, or what sort of interaction they would have. The setting arose naturally from where the characters happened to be when that scene was placed. If I moved the card to another point in the narrative, then the setting would be entirely different. As for how they interacted, that has to do with who the characters are, what they want at that moment, their mood at the time, that kind of thing.

That's how I'm trying to balance the need to keep the story along the pre-determined path, while still allowing room for creativity. It's how I can know where I'm going, yet still make discoveries along the way.

One of the things I enjoy most about writing is figuring out how something I had set up earlier in the story, without knowing exactly how or when I was going to pay it off, has surprising relevance to the present moment. Occasionally, a plot point is introduced earlier than I anticipated, because the interaction between characters is driving the story towards it without my help. If it happens too early, I have to figure out how to divert that flow without making it unnatural. If it doesn't happen when I want it to, I have to figure out if it makes sense to do the introduction there at all.

I say all of that to say this: I have just finished revising the outline for the part of the story I've been calling "Book 2," although at this point, I'd have to say it'd be more accurate to call it Part 2, or even Chunk 2. In order to write some of the upcoming scenes, I need to do the same for Chunk 3.

So... time to write some more index cards, and tape them together.