Tara Maya's Tales

This is why Da Vinci never wanted to show his drafts to anyone. I realized today why my Thanksgiving was so conflict free. My mom wasn't there. She arrived today to make up for the lack of exciting family drama. Yay! (Just kidding, Mom, if you're reading this...)  Despite that, I'm going strong on my NaNo novel, and I'm more or less on schedule. (*snort*) I've built up the novel by accretion from the bones of an outline, creating richer and richer outlines as I go. I promised a sample of moving from a Scene Outline to a Draft. Here it is: Scene Outline / Notes: Chapter Five, Scene One: - Knight's Lounge - Meet all the Big Players  - They summon Walida to ask her about the Key - She says they have a bigger problem; someone is has used the October Key - Tiffany says she knows who has the Key: Kenny Snow - Maybe Snow killed Walida? - Clare stands by her other theory, that it was Dorcas - Must do everything to safeguard the Key - Arkane looks r...

My outlining will probably go through three stages. (1) Short Outline -  basic story arc of the book (2) Long Outline - list of scenes, with conflict-response for each scene (3) Outline Draft - technically, a first draft, but so awful I can't stand to call it a draft, so I pretend it's just a really long outline * * * I think of the Short Outline as the infrastructure of my book. Here I decide the word count I'm aiming at, the number of chapters and the approximate number of words per chapter. I decide how many PoV characters there will be, and how many storylines. Although it will give me tremendous grief at some point in the writing of the novel, I stick to this infrastructure like a underground splinter cult fanatic clings to an uzi. My word count, however, often suffers from bloat, perhaps brought on by adverb retention, but often as a result of overindulging in subplots. For this novel, I have a central image/metaphor of a well. I envision the still circle of water ref...