Notecarding: An introduction

I’ve mentioned before how I plan on notecarding TAO this coming month. Now generally, notecarding might be something you want to do before you start writing your story, as part of the plotting process. I’ve found that it can also help you get a pretty good overview of your story once you’ve finished the first draft.

This is especially helpful when most of it was written during Nano. Because anyone who has ever taken part in that November Madness knows that sometimes, stuff just happens, characters die and is still there four chapters later, and at some point you may have random turtles on a beach.

So for TAO – The Afterlife Occurrence – I am notecarding before I get started on the editing process. I need to know what it there, what is missing, and what I need to scrap ASAP. Of course, there are several different ways to notecard, you don’t even need actual notecards! Post-it notes work just as well, or just random pieces of paper (though if they are the same size it would help). You can also notecard directly in Scrivener (which I do when plotting before and during the first draft).

I’ve figured out how I want to do it for TAO in a way that works for me. You may want to do it differently. And that’s ok. My way reflects how my brain works, or at least how it would prefer to work. I’ve got some links in my resources you can check out for more notecarding information.

Notecarding TAO in two parts:

• The Chapters
  • Write down one card for each chapter. Write what happens in a few lines. Not too many detail. If there is room, write down new characters we meet in this chapter.
  • Once you have one card for each chapter, look through to see what is missing. Add a chapter if needed, or even remove one.
• The Scenes
  • Once you have all the chapters written down, go through each of them and write down the different scenes in each chapter on a notecard. If you use post-its, using different colors for chapter and scenes is smart. If you don’t, highlighters are your friend.
    • PS: I love my highlighters.
  • Now look at all the scenes you have. What is missing? What is in the wrong place? What needs to go away forever? When you are done removing and adding scenes, you should have the whole book notecarded and outlines, and ready for the next step.
    • PS: That next step for me is editing.

In the end, when I am done with this, I should have a firm grasp of where my book is going, what happens, and more importantly, what is currently not happening but seriously need to!