I’m closing in on the end of the first book in the space opera series — THE HIGH GROUND. I knew in a general way what the big action sequence was going to be, but I’m almost there, and it’s crunch time. A general sense wasn’t going to be good enough. I needed specific scenes. So I grabbed the cards, assigned a colored pen to my two POV characters, and another color for my antagonist, and settled onto the floor in front of the board and started tossing up actual scenes.
What is Mercedes doing? What is Tracy doing? What will go wrong? What do we learn about non POV characters? Amazing how this all started coming into focus from just the act of writing. I still have one outstanding question regarding the antagonist, but I have some cards and questions to myself off on the far side of the board. Sometimes just writing down the questions starts the brain turning.
I know that “pantsers” or “gardeners” would have just started writing and hoped the subconscious took them in the right direction, but sometimes the subconscious gets lost and confused and then you’re just typing aimlessly waiting for inspiration to strike. I prefer to find the pitfalls before I’ve written several thousand words.
