HOSvision Revision

So for the last little while, I've been working on revising HOS. To do that, I had to finish up HOSvision. (What the heck is HOSvision?)





I'm so glad I set this up because it's been enormously helpful for revision. It gives me both a broad view of the balance of the plot but also a very quick chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene accounting of the story. So as I'm going along revising, I can track just where certain things happened without relying on memory or flipping through 500 pages.

The chart is color coded by the characters that dominate each scene. For some reason (and it would probably be a good idea to figure out why,) this made more sense for me, helped me keep things clear. There are little star stickers in a variety of colors to give me the emotional feel of the scene. The larger dark stickers are actually cat stickers because I could not for the life of me remember where the cat was in this story and it was important to know where she was.

Of course, the thing that jumps out is the long string of blue stickies near the end. That's the climax (and the lead up to the climax.) This seems long, right? Six chapters of buildup and climax. But it's a fifty-chapter book. Also, this is when my MC is drawn almost completely into the world and secret hell of the character represented by the blue stickies.

In the end, this method helped more as an organizational tool than an aid in helping me move forward as far as figuring out the plot. But since I am a massively disorganized mess at the best of times, I'm definitely going to try this again with the current WIP, especially since that is from two different POVs. I'm going to need a lot of stickies.

Friday Five: Where Have I Been?

1. Uh, nowhere, actually.

2. I have, though, been head down in revision on HOS. It's gone very well and I'm so excited about this book. I love it dearly, dearly, dearly. My first two published books had male MCs and while I adore them still and loved writing them, I feel a kinship with Eddy (the female MC of HOS) that is different. Well, there is a difference between adoration and kinship.

3. I've also been working on a new WIP. Bits and pieces and trying to plot as much as I can. I've got two MCs this time, a boy and a girl, and this girl is a little slow to let me in, so I'm giving her time to reveal herself.

4. And eventually, I will relaunch WIP Diary 2.0, if only to help me keep track of what I'm doing. Hopefully next week.

5. And I am embracing the digital age. I was given an ereader for Christmas and I love it. For me, it does not replace physical books. There are pluses and minuses to it. Chiefly--and this may be a quirk of my own--I miss flipping through pages with ease. Ereaders do not flip. Other issues include protecting it from extremes in temperature which aren't all that extreme, like ninety-eight degrees. And a sudden new concern that it could be stolen, so I can't leave it in the car, something that never worried me with physical books. And many of my old favorite books--the books I love to reread--are not available in ebook form. (Hello, Dorothy L. Sayers estate, get on the ball.) But on the plus side, as a multi-book reader (reading more than one book at a time,) I do love carrying a truckload of books around with me in the palm of my hand.