I had a major revelation about my current WIP this week and it meant pulling out about ten chapters of the book. They had not all been written, but a major subplot is now gone. This means reordering my remaining scenes to focus on a different plot. So I have decided to get a cork board and stick my scenes up on it act by act.
I’m using half index cards in order to squeeze them onto my smaller board. I’ve since changed the blue tape to show just the first three acts of a four act story. A second board is under this one to show the fourth act. According to Larry Brooks, a novel will consist of about 90 scenes. I have my scenes divided into chapters, but that could change.
Here you see my laptop open to Plume Creator, my novel writing software. The note card is to the right along with colored pens to highlight POV characters. This makes it easy to see who has the most scenes.
Here is a close up of the note cards. Brief description, followed by some meta data about the scene. Sometimes this will change as I go through drafts. (-/-) is a way to show emotional changes, (><) is a way to show conflict and POV is of course the Point Of View character.
Just about all of this meta data is already in my program, but I think it will be easier to see the big picture on a board and move scenes around as needed.