Story bits

When I started sorting through all of my notebooks looking for the bits that would fit into the action / reaction sections for the first chapter I got a bit of a shock. There is so much material.

I'm not sure which would be the quicker way to sort it all out. To type it all up and file it into directories labeled Beginning, middle, end, to finish all the action/reaction sections and then go through and map the content I have to each one. Or to keep reading to find the bits I need to for the first chapter.

The problem with typing it all out is that I tend to edit it along the way and this is time consuming. A lot of the notes are bits of character development, bits of showing, bits of telling what the story is doing and bits of nothing really worthwhile. So I start fixing it up as I go; moulding into a story and it takes ages.

I see draft 0.1 as the general gist of the story. Almost an outline of an outline. So I don't want to spend a lot of time getting bogged down in the perfecting the writing. Particularly the descriptions. Which is what is happening.

I just want see the logic of the story, how it hangs together and how the characters, settings and plot fit together. I am hoping from this that the characters will start to become more distinctive. At the moment, I only have a ghost image of most of them. Nancy, Charlie and Freida are the only ones that having have a bit more substance.

Ok. What to do.

I think I might fill out the action/reaction cards from my notes, but not number them. Just describe the basic conflict/emotion of each action and which plot theme it supports. From there I will fill out the action/reaction sheets with the essential information out of my notes and the character profiles where appropriate.

I'll give that a try and see how it goes.