RWA 2012–part 2

After my adventures at Disneyland it was back to the hotel to get reader for the Readers for Life Literacy Signing. Each year RWA holds this charity event to raise money for literacy charities. Publishers and authors donate books for the event and all the money raised goes to the charity. If you ever wanted to wander through a room full of more than 400 authors, all happy to chat and meet readers and sign books, you really need to pop along if it ever happens in a city near you! This year RWA raised more than $50,000! Way to go! 


Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat or buy a book! Here’s me sitting at my desk:




After the signing, it had become tradition for the Mills & Boon authors (Harlequin authors edited out of the London office) to meet up for a pizza party. This year was the busiest ever! Much wine was drunk. Much pizza was eaten. Much laughter was had. And for the first time I can ever remember, I was in a room with TWO other Fionas – Fiona Lowe and Fiona McArthur, both Aussie Medical Romance authors. I was all for hatching plans for world domination, since the Fionas were in the majority for once, but the other two managed to talk me down...

Thursday the conference really got underway. Workshops started and we also had the Keynote luncheon, with speaker Stephanie Laurens. Her speech was both thought-provoking and inspirational, and if you want to read why she thinks authors need not panic in the current publishing climate, you can read her address here.


However, the real highlight of my Thursday had to be the Harlequin Romance Authors’ tea at the Cheesecake factory in Anaheim, with authors Donna Alward, Barbara Wallace, Melissa McClone, Teresa Carpenter, Patricia Thayer, editors Bryony Green and Tessa Shapcott and VP of series Dianne Moggy.

I LOVE cheesecake, but unfortunately my hubby does not, so I don’t get to eat it very often. We ordered eight pieces between ten of us. Surely we’d be able to defeat that many bits of cheesecake between us? The challenge was on! (I’ve borrowed Donna’s photo, because it shows more cheesecake than mine did!)

And just so you can see the depths of my cheesecake obsession, I am going to tell you exactly what we ordered:

• Red Velvet Cheesecake
• Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Cheesecake
• Banana Cream Cheesecake
• Dulce de Leche Caramel Cheesecake (OMG!)
• Chocolate Tuxedo Cream Cheesecake
• Pineapple Upside-Down Cheesecake
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake
• Dutch Apple Caramel Streusel (my choice!)

Top votes went to the Reese’s cheesecake and the Dulce de Leche, if I remember rightly. And did we defeat the cheesecake? Well, here’s your answer:

No we did not. And I think we should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

Barbara, Donna and I decided to placate our consciences by walking back to the hotel instead of getting a cab. It was only about ten minutes away, and it was a lovely walk in the afternoon sunshine down avenues of palm trees.

But Donna and I were back that way later in the evening, when we headed out to Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Co. for dinner. We even managed to impress our server with our Forrest Gump trivia knowledge when he gave us a quiz! The only one we really got stuck on was Bubba’s full name. I challenge you all to remember it (without Googling, you cheaters!) and see if you can get it right.

Here’s Donna at Bubba Gump’s looking very happy she’s about to have fish and chips. Me, I gorged myself on shrimp. What else?

 
Me and Donna go together like peas and carrots...

RWA 2012–part 1

I hadn’t planned on attending the RWA conference this year, much as I love the craziness of the whole event, but then my best writing buddy Donna Alward was shortlisted for a RITA I counted up my pennies and decided to go. How could I not be there to cheer her on? (Lest anyone think I am completely saintly, I did really want to go anyway.)

It’s a long old flight to LAX from London. Thankfully, fellow Harlequin/M&B author Heidi Rice and I had organised to sit together and gossiping between watching films definitely made the 11 hours go more quickly. The flight itself was amazing. We had pretty clear weather and I saw the coast of Greenland, icebergs in Hudson Bay and then the casinos of Las Vegas and a vast desert all in the short space of a few hours.

I don’t remember much of my first night in California, apart from being very, very happy to see Donna again and sitting down and eating dinner at what would have been 4 a.m. UK time.

I had a choice of what to do on Tuesday. Either I could attend a mini women’s fiction conference – the sensible and professional option – or I could go to Disneyland. Yep. No prizes for guessing what I did! But seeing as I’ve never been to a Disney resort before in my life, how could I go within minutes of the gates and not visit?

Thankfully, Michelle Willingham, Historical Romance Author and trip-organiser extraordinaire had volunteered to wrangle a group of assorted authors and editors round the park with maximum efficiency. I had one plan for the day: don’t fall asleep and go where Michelle tells me. It worked out rather well! Here’s our party:

From left to right: Jennie Lucas, Maisey Yates, Lucy Gilmour, Michelle Willingham, Katy Madison, Julia Justiss, Cara Elliott, Bryony Green, Blythe Gifford, me & Tessa Shapcott. (Pic taken with Michelle’s iPhone)
 
We started with the Matterhorn, which unfortunately triggered my motion sickness, but next was Buzz Lightyear and I discovered I’m quite a whiz with a laser gun! Pic, courtesy of Jennie Lucas (including me with alien eyes) to prove it.

We also rode the jungle river ride, the Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World (a slightly psychedelic experience when you’re spaced out on jet lag!), the Haunted Mansion and a few other things my tired brain has probably eaten.
 
Probably most fun was Splash Mountain. I thought I was clever sitting in the back of the boat until Jennie told me you get just as wet there. She wasn’t wrong. The water splashed those in the front then swooshed up over the sides at the back to get me. As you can see, I didn’t really care much. (That's me, smiling but hanging on at the back.)

While some of our party had to leave, five of us stayed to have lunch at the Blue Bayou – a restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride that resembles a Mississippi swamp at night. I tried to take photos, but it was too dark too see much but the paper lanterns that hung from the ceiling. I did eat the nicest Jambalaya I’ve ever had there, though! Seriously good.

Then we did the Indiana Jones ride, which took over as my favourite, before heading back to the hotel to get ready for the more writerly events of the afternoon. Here are a few more of my favourite Disney pics:

Having fun with sticks

M&B have been running a romantic story featuring stick men and women on their Facebook page. Such fun. Readers have been voting for their preferences for names, characters, locations and plot twists. I thought it was so cute I decided I'd have a go myself!

So, this is what an author gets up to on a Sunday evening... Excuse the patchy colour, but it seems we have tons of felt tips in the house, but none of them actually have ink inside. Had to resort to colouring pencils in the end (sorted into rainbow colour order, of course).

I want to do one for all my books now! probably better get on with writing the current book, though...

Stuck in the middle?

I'm a busy little bee at the moment. Revisions are in for my Valentine's story, and then I'm working on another book that has to be done and dusted by mid-July.

In the meantime, I'm blogging over at the Pink Heart Society today, talking about story structure and character arc - especially that sticky middle point.

Almost there...

I wrote the final scene of my current book (working title: The Valentine's Trap, part of a duet I'm doing with Nikki Logan) this morning.

Hard at work at my local Waitrose!

I had the scene all planned out, but I couldn't get my head in the right place to put it down on paper. So what did I do? I went shopping. No, not shoe shopping - grocery shopping. Writing in cafes is my trick when I can't seem to settle to write at home. Nothing to distract me there, especially if I take pen and paper and don't have internet access.

I can also then feel virtuous that I've crossed another chore off my list. Also, I use the hand held scanner to zap my shopping and leave my trolley outside the cafe while I buy a coffee and write. I know I don't have long before the chiller stuff in my cool bag starts to get warm, so I can't dally. And there we had it. 1200 words written in just under and hour and I left my hero and heroine arguing about who proposed to whom...

Brain dead and beautiful cover

Am finishing book. Words all used up. 

Told daughter my brain is like a busy hardrive and there's only so much processing power left, so she has to talk in monosyllables if she wants me to understand. And, oh yes, that she needs to poke me if she wants an answer because the words are all in my head and not coming out the hole in the front of my face.

In the meantime, until regular service resumes, I've got a new cover! Here's the US cover to Always The Best Man:

 And here's the blurb:

The best man...for the bridesmaid?

Standing at the altar, Damien is breathless as the woman he loves walks toward him-to marry another man. Knowing bridesmaid Zoe's watching him makes it harder still. The opposite of the bride, Zoe's too loud, too vibrant, too...everything!

Zoe can't resist provoking him-just once, she'd like to see "Mr. Perfect" lose his cool. She can tell there are fireworks smoldering behind those pale blue eyes.

But before the wedding night is over, their unexpected connection will threaten to undermine everything they both believe about themselves and each other....

 

 

The road to nowhere...

 I'm over at the Pink Heart Society today. It's part five of my series on story structure and character arc and I'm talking fun and games with crickets and tumbleweed.

Hello, Your Majesty...

I haven't got any writing done today - yet. Mainly because I spent most of this morning freezing my behind off waiting to see the Queen with my youngest, who'd been given the morning off school for the privilige. Here's a couple of pics:

Cover contest

I'm proud to say that the North American edition of Swept Off Her Stilettos is up for the Cover Cafe's 2011 cover contest!

Now, while I can't claim to have had anything to do with the design of the actual cover, it did straight from a description I filled into my Art Fact Sheet, and the artist interpreted it pretty faithfully. I really like it when my covers are recognisable as a scene from the book.

If you want to vote, you can find the page here. Be aware that you have to vote in three categories for your vote to count. I just went and had a look and picked my faves in each one. Once I'd got started I just couldn't stop.

The 'Worst Cover' category is always a hoot. Lots of naked flesh. The titles are almost as good as the covers. My Life As a White Trash Zombie, anyone? There's German cover with a man and a strategically-placed Christmas tree. (Seriously? Someone's big-headed. Surely a pot plant would have been ample coverage...) There's a crazy-eyed bare-chested man that I almost voted for, but one was just so scrappily designed that it had to get the wink. What do you reckon?


Anyway, here's the scene that my cover was from. A pretty good match, right?

Everything about dancing with Nicholas was perfect.  His hand was warm and sure on my back as he guided me round our impromptu dance floor.  He talked easily to me, all the while looking effortlessly drool-worthy and smiling into my eyes. 

It was perfect.  It was.

Only…

I was reminded of those cakes in the coffee shop display case that I always yearned for but never seemed to fit the bill.  Finally I’d found one that matched what my taste buds craved.  It had all the right ingredients, looked divine, but now I’d taken a bite I’d discovered that it tasted all…wrong.

Dancing with Nicholas wasn’t a dream come true, it was an effort.  What surprised me most was that I wasn’t bitterly disappointed.  Instead I had that horrible, warm scratchy feeling you get when you know there’s somewhere else you need to be, something else you need to be doing.  I was almost grateful to Louisa when the track on the gramophone changed and she nabbed the opportunity to cut in.

When I stepped out of Nicholas’s hold I knew Adam was standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around and glide into his arms.  And I couldn’t stop myself.

‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ he whispered into my ear and a whole series of teeny-tiny fireworks detonated up the back of my neck. 

I controlled the resulting quiver well enough to answer him.  ‘You’re not the only one to have secrets, Conrad.’

But I couldn’t keep the banter up.  The air around us seemed too heavy for our usual frivolity.

Adam didn’t smile at me as we danced.  He didn’t even talk.  If he had, I might not have heard him.  All I was aware of was his strong, capable fingers holding mine, of his broad palm at the small of my back.  I couldn’t hold his gaze.  It was too intense, too full of things I was too scared to label, so when the needle on the gramophone scratched its way onto a slower song, I rested my temple against his cheek and closed my eyes.

I have no idea how long we swayed and turned like that.  Eventually, though, I noticed the air on my bare arms had become cooler, that the light behind my closed eyelids had dimmed to almost nothing.  I flickered my lashes apart and opened my eyes.

We were on the terrace.  In the moonlight.  The warm yellow glow of the drawing room was only feet away, but it felt as if we were in a different world.  The sheer curtains over the doors fluttered and curled in the light breeze, beckoning us back.  Silently, by mutual agreement and the meeting of eyes, we ignored their call.

Had we stopped dancing?  I wasn’t sure.

The way Adam looked at me…it brought tears to the backs of my eyes.  Such gentleness.  Such openness.  Such acceptance.  I couldn’t breathe with the intensity of it.  Something deep down inside of me turned over.  It felt like a door being opened.

Adam brought his hand up to the side of my face and his fingertips traced the line of my cheekbone then threaded up past my temple into the soft waves of my hair.  I knew what was coming, and yet I didn’t know.  Couldn’t quite get myself to believe it was true, that it was Adam and I standing here in the moonlight like this.  I stayed completely still.

He dipped his head forward and our lips touched, just for a moment, and then he pulled back slightly so he was only millimetres away.  I closed my eyes and let the weight of my head rest in his hand, and then I waited, a well of longing rising up within me.  I didn’t tease or taunt or dare.  I surrendered.  Maybe for the first time in my life.

And, as a reward, I got what I’d truly been longing for, because Adam really knew how to kiss.  His lips brushed over mine slowly, teasing me, and then he deepened the kiss so swiftly I hardly knew what to do with myself.  I felt as if I was falling and being caught all at the same time.

I lost myself.  Along with the sense of time and gravity and reason.

And that’s why I had to put an end to it.

That’s why I had to push him away gently, my palms flattened on his chest.

Even so, it was my lips that clung as he drew away, my hands that bunched his shirt up into wrinkles before the cotton slipped through my fingers.

I blinked and looked at him.  ‘What was that for?’

Eyes of warm espresso with caramel running through them.  I didn’t have to look at his mouth to know he was smiling ever so faintly.

‘You know why.’

Good news!

Wow. Just wow.

I've just had an email to let me know that both books that I entered in the Golden Quill contest have made the final cut this year!

Eek! and Ahhhhh...

Eek!
Right. Have six weeks to write the next book. (gulp) That's only 34 writing days, cos I have one day a week off - necessary to stop brain overheating. While 1500 words per day doesn't sound like a lot, it's still going to be tight.
It's not getting the words down on paper that's the problem; it's doing all the behind the scenes work so I know where I'm going with it. Once that's sorted, the word count is easy. Oh, if only the story wrangling was as simple!

Ahhhh...
The upside is that I've not long got back from a lovely, once in a lifetime holiday in St Lucia. (Have decided I will buy a villa here when I write my blockbuster. lol) Sipping cocktails under a palm tree on the beach tends to bring a little much-needed rest to a mind. And the next story is bubbling away nicely in my head.

Meanwhile, here's a photo from my sun lounger to remind me to stay chilled and not to panic about the approaching deadline...

Little bit of book trivia here... The plant on the beach is sea purslane - which I researched for The Ballerina Bride/Dancing With Danger. It's edible, and during the book Allegra collects some to eat when she's cast away on a desert island with the luscious Finn.

New tricks for an old dog

Keeping all the threads of a story in your head in the proper place when you're trying to revise and edit can be tricky - a bit like juggling a dozen balls at once. I often find I miss things if I don't do something to cement it into my head, especially in the rewriting process.

So today I decided to do something new. I've been digging deeper into my characters and pulling out their internal motivation, but I'm now on my TENTH draft of this book, and I keep forgetting what I've put in, what I've taken out, and what still has to go in that hasn't made it onto the page yet. Confused? I am.

Anyway, to help myself remember where I've been going with my new, improved conflict, I've reosrted to using the highlighting tool in Word. (Don't you wish they did less eye-popping colours? OneNote has some lovely pastel ones that don't sear my retina quite so badly, but I digress...)

So I started highlighting the key bits:
PINK for my heroine's backstory/internal conflict
BLUE for my hero's backstory/internal conflict
YELLOW for the romantic conflict
GREEN for the moments my hero and heroine connect

Wonderful! Current details now cemented in, old ones forgotten!


Of course, I then went a step further and roped in my trust old plotboard. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) I used my highlightings to make notes on identically-coloured mini post-its attached to each scene card, just so I could remember everything at a glance if I needed to. Yes, I really am that sad.

But as much as this has taken about an hour away from my writing, I know its going to help me as I revise the end of my book. I have a feeling quite a few scenes will need to be rewritten entirely, so knowing where I've been and where I'm going with it all is rather important. Without this process I'd have been lost in the woods again without a torch.

So, what do you do to cement the story in your head? And are you as sad as I am? Please say yes!

Another revisions comparison

Earler this week I said revisions were like unravelling knitting. Now I have decided these revisions are a little more extensive - like remodelling a house.

Move this wall, build that wall there, change where the door is...  Heck, is anything holding the ceiling up?

I'm reminded of the scene in Sleepless in Seattle, where Tom Hanks dicusses working on designing a house and the client keeps wanting to change things and there's a running joke that they can do it but it always involves changing the kitchen cabinets.

ChapterTwo is my kitchen cabinets.

I get eeper into the book (which is way too long, anyway), realise that I could simplify things even further, thereby cutting another chunk of extraneous wordage, but it always seems to involve going back to rewrite chapter two. I am starting to feel I will never get past chapter two, I will never finish these revisions and I will die at my keyboard, my fingers twitching, with this book incomplete.

Okay. Rant over. Feel better now. Back to work. By which, of course, I mean chapter two...

Revisions and knitting

I'm in the middle of revising my current work-in-progress, Snowbound with the Earl. I have decided that revising a book is a bit like unpicking a home-knitted jumper that didn't quite go right. You have to unpick all those threads you wove together to tweak some, cut some out, or add some new ones in, and I'm at the part in the process where I've pulled the book apart, and I'm looking at a mess of spaghetti, thinking, 'How the heck am I going to put that back together? Where do I start?'

Not sure there is any golden rule. You just start. Knit one, purl one. And hope that the end result will not just have arms and a neck hole, but will be stylish and comfy and so much better that than the old one. Sigh. Wish me luck!

Harlequin Authors blog

Just dropping by to say that the Harlequin Romance authors are relaunching our blog and website, and to celebrate we've got giveaways and recipes every day!

Pop on over: http://www.harlequinromanceauthors.com/
Today it's Liz Fielding and her gorgeous shortbread recipe!

New book started!

Finally, I have done enough research and character digging to at least make a start on my next book!  I've decided I might as well blog about how I'm using my plotboard as I go along.

At the moment the poor thing is naked, but that will change in the next couple of days...

The Plotboard - part two

Cards and drafts

I thought I’d mention a bit about how I use the cards and Post-Its on my plotboard before I get into detail about the different sections of the board.

First draft
The keyword for this stage is: messy.  This is the ideas stage, after all.  Flashes of inspiration.  Nothing neat about those.  In this stage I tend to scribble ideas down on any bit of paper I can find and pin them to the board where I think they’ll be most relevant.

Don’t care about what colour or what shape the ideas are written on, as long as they go on the board.  Some of them may be thrown away later and some of them may prove to be some kick-butt ideas to take my story forward.  No way to know which until I start to write, so everything stays until I’ve finished the first draft.  If I don’t use an idea, I keep the bit of paper anyway.  For the last book that came in very handy, because ideas that I’d discarded in the first draft helped me revise the book after my editor had seen it and asked for changes.

As I write, I use half an index card (cut vertically) and put the bare plot point of the element on the top of the card.  For example, some card headings from the previous book were: “Zoe and Damien dance” or “Zoe and Damien reach a truce” or “Zoe goes back home”. 

At the moment I’m using white cards.  I was using yellow, but I discovered I kept running out of yellow index cards and was drowning in the other colours from the multi-coloured packs you can buy.  At least I can get white index cards easily in one pack on their own.

As I complete a scene, I add an index card to the board.  For the previous book I also stuck a small Post-It to the card indicating the goal of the POV character for that scene.  Always good to remind yourself what your characters want (and what’s thwarting their progress).

In this part of the process, I find myself returning to my board constantly to remind myself of what good ideas I’ve forgotten and to remind myself of where I want to go.  It can be hard to hold all of that information in your head.  Sometimes, when I’m focussed on a particular part of the story, I forget all about the flashes of inspiration I’ve had about a different sections.  That’s where my board comes in handy.  It holds all that information for me until I’m ready for it.

The plotboard is also useful to remind myself of things I need to go back and change as I get further on in the writing process.  I added notes while writing my previous book to change the style of the bride’s wedding ring in the opening scenes and to set up my hero as being a little more stiff and structured. 

Subsequent drafts/revisions

Quite often, after you’ve finished a book, you’re far too close to it to see where the problems lie.  I often return to my plotboard, strip it bare of everything but the white cards and look at the story in a more tidy, analytical way.  First draft was where I let my creative right brain play.  Revisions and editing are much more about the logical left brain.

Last time round (after reading Dara Mark’s fabulous book Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc) I decided to look at my book in three threads:

What Dara calls the A story – on other words the plot.  It’s very easy in a character-led book to slip into classifying internal decisions as plot, but I try and save that for the other threads.  The A story is all about the physical action: what are the characters doing?  What are the working towards? Where are they going?  I used yellow Post-Its.  For some reason yellow means plot to me.  Dunno why.  Sometimes, if the scene heading on the top of the card was enough description on its own, I highlighted that text yellow and didn't bother with the Post-It.

Then we have the B story: the character arc.  In a romance, you normally have two character arcs or journeys – one for the hero and one for the heroine.  I chose green from my pack of Post-Its for this (because green makes me think of growth).  On these stickers I noted my characters’ internal journeys – what they started out like, what their character flaws and fears were, what they need to learn.  Also, when they had moments of breakthrough and changed, how they faced challenges and either resorted on their armour to keep themselves safe or did something new and brave.  At the end of the board it's all about making sure those flaws and fears you mentioned at the beginning have been dealt with.  I read through each chapter, saw what I’d already brought out and then I crystalised it into a sentence or two on a Post-It and stuck it on the index card.  Quite often it helped me define the character’s growth at that point and I could start to see if I’d brought out the right things or if there was something missing.

Then there’s the C story.  Dara says there’s always a C story.  It’s the relationship that changes the protagonist.  Quite often it's through interaction with another person or thing that the protagonist discovers the error of their ways.  In a romance, this will be the developing love story.  I noted down on pink Post-Its (the only colour I had left - I’m really not anal about what colour goes where) how the hero and heroine were feeling about each other, what the romantic conflict was, and where the milestones were e.g first kiss, first meeting, declarations of love.  Again, it helped me check each scene was moving the relationship on in a believable and emotionally logical manner.

The odd thing is about this part of the process that I hardly ever look back to see what I’ve put on the board in great detail.  Unlike the first draft, when I need reminders, the second draft (or whatever) seems to be much more about the process of plotboarding.  As I write it all down it somehow solidifies the story in my head, keeps the threads woven tight together so I can see where things need changing or developing as I work.



More detail on each section of the board soon...

One of the best bits

One of the best bits of my job is getting to research and/or visit interesting places.  My next book is going to be set in a stately home, so today I visited Leeds Castle (near Maidstone in Kent) for some inspiration.  I'm not going to say much more, but just let the pics I took of this fairytale castle do the talking:

Leeds Castle

The bridge to the castle island

The Queen's bedchamber

Little courtyard in the centre of the castle

The library (I want!)

The castle from the lawn on the island

From the centre of the maze

The castle on its island

Sigh.  What more can I say?

Plotboarding - how I got started

Okay, I promised some blogs about my plotboard.  Now, I can’t claim to have invented the idea – far from it – but I’ve been tweaking my own approach to using index cards and pins to help me visualise my book for about six years now.

I’m quite a visual thinker and it helps me to ‘see’ the structure of my book this way.  It also provides a place to put all those ‘lightning bolt’ ideas I get about my book before, during and after the first draft.  You  know the kind of ideas I mean: the ones you get when you’re minding your own business, not even really thinking about the book and – BAM! – suddenly you know why your heroine is acting that way, or the perfect setting for a scene comes to mind, or just a line of dialogue pops into your head and triggers something off.

When I get those kind of ideas – and they are generally my best ones – I scribble them down and pin them to my board.  My board follows a chronological timeline of my work-in-progress, and when I think about where to pin that scrap of paper it often becomes instantly obvious where and when it should go.  Do things move and change as I work on the book?  Absolutely.  That’s why God gave us coloured pins!  That’s the beauty of a plotboard: nothing is set in stone.

Anyway, here’s my first plotboard. This was the one I used for Her Parenthood Assignment.  My whole approach to plotting was much less sophisticated (and probably much less neurosis-inducing) back then.  I’d read that a good way to plot was to think of 20 things that needed to happen in your book.  That’s what the pink index cards are: 20 plot points for the story.  Then, as other ideas came to me, or notions of how I could develop those plot points floated to the surface of my consciousness, I tacked them onto the board next to the relevant plot point.

Later that year, I listened to the audio recording of Michael Hauge speaking at the RWA conference in Dallas.  I loved the way he divided a plot into six stages, with a turning point between each one.   I’d already read The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, and was familiar with the steps of the hero’s journey, but Michael Hauge’s approach was simpler: basically three acts, with a turning point in the middle of each one. 

So I started trying to incorporate that into my board.  Here’s version number 2, which I used to plot Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses (although, by the looks of it, I took this picture fairly early on in the process.)  I turned my board landscape and divided the space into six sections with bits of string (well, actually it was yellow wool left over from a pair of socks my grandma had knitted me years before) and labelled those sections and the turning points at the top.  Now when I had an idea I didn’t worry so much about getting it in exactly the right chronological order, as long as I stuck the scrap of paper in the right section I’d know where to find it. 

From what I remember, I decided to colour code to help me pick out the essential info.  The white cards are plot events, the pink cards relate to my heroine’s journey and the blue my hero’s.  Yellow cards were snatched of dialogue and the green were things to do with theme.  I carried on using this format for a couple of years.  Where I placed the cards and what colour they were changed as I tried different things out. 
Sometimes I was very fixed on cataloguing character arc and plot separately; sometimes I just threw it all on there any old way.  The main disadvantage was that I could see the plot flowing from card to card in one long line, as I had with my earlier version.

Then I read Save The Cat by Blake Snyder.  Great book, and I loved his idea of storyboarding too.  He divided his story board into four horizontal strips: Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b and Act 3.  I immediately decided to try the same thing, and discovered I now had room to use my plot point cards in chronological order, but I still had room to pin all the little flashes of ideas around them too.  So this is how my current plotboard looks like:

This the the board when I was halfway through writing The Ballerina Bride (US title)/Dancing With Danger (UK title).  Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough already for this post, so next time I’ll talk about the structure of the different acts and what goes where.

Should've stayed on board...

Just got revisions back for Always The Best Man (whether it keeps that title or not remains to be seen!).  It seems that my ending feels a little rushed.  I had suspected as much myself, and when I got my trusty plotboard out, I could see why!

This is the current incarnation of my plotboard. 
There are four rows:

• act 1
• first part of act 2
• second part of act 2
• act 3

Compared to the beginning of the story, the last act is a little sparse!  And if I'd paid attention to my board instead of ignoring that while I wrote the final chapter or two, I might have worked that out for myself.

I find having visual map of my book exremely helpful in both the writing and revising stages.  In the first draft I can scribble my ideas on post-its and index cards (or bits of envelopes etc.) and often there is an obvious place to pin those ideas when I look at my board.  In the revising stage, I can start to jiggle cards around and see what's working and what isn't.

Anyway, can't stay round here blogging all evening.  I've got a book to revise!  Back to the board for me...