Today I am making my first pass through my story cards. The goal is to review the main and each sub storyline, match them against the character arcs I just finished, and use that information to help me decide which scenes are fine as is, which ones I need to beef up or trim down, and which I need to delete in service of the story.
Before I got my writing app, Scrivener, it would have meant writing things down on index cards, then sitting at the dining room table and shuffling them around as I referred to the pages of my novel. I would have had to make notes on them on what needed to change, and when I was happy with the order, I would have had to number them so I knew what I had to go change in each of the chapter files. THEN, of course, it would have meant going into each file that had a change in it, finding the passage, and potentially copying between files as I move things around. Tedious work. Necessary. But tedious all the same.
In walked geniuses who designed Scrivener. A screenshot below shows you what the interface looks like. On top of it being a great, intuitive environment for writing, it has a clipboard where you can review virtual index cards. If I want to make a change, I can make a note on the card, or in the file behind the index card. If I want to move things around, it’s as easy as drag and drop. No harm. No foul. No hours upon hours of copy and pasting as I move scenes to different chapters, or in different orders. I move it, and everything associated with it moves, too.
This is one of the many reasons I am in love with my writing app.
Happy writing.
Categories: Writing
