Using Visuals to Help Keep Track of Story Structure

My book is just about at the halfway mark.  It’s going well.  Last week was, as you guessed if you read the post, rather rough.

I finished a portion of the story that is happy and uplifting.  I’m trying to keep it close to my heart so I can use it to get through the rest.  I’m getting some great stories and some interesting characters…

…But I’m having trouble keeping track of it all.

My book is a collection of stories from people all over the world.  I have a great program, Scrivener, to help keep track of it all, but at the end of the day, I found it really useful to make a physical map to lay everything out.  Now when I’m typing, I can see the gaps in my story and fill them in.

The timeline is showing me where the gaps are, and where I have overlap that could be moved around.

Already, these little things on my wall have caused me to shift the times and locations of a few stories.

Cue cards are helping me keep track of the major themes, as well as a body count, for each of the segments.  :<

It’s helping shape my story, and helping me keep track of everything.  If it helps you too, do it.  Do whatever works.

As before, I can’t wait to be done with this one.  It’s good, but man is it hard to write.

Side note: I found this comment on Reddit about how the original Enterprise is at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, but that it needs to be restored.

Having just been hooked by the original series, I thought I’d see what we could do about that.  I contacted them about getting it refit; hopefully I’ll hear back!  If not, I will post an open letter to gain support.  More on that later!

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.