Like a Movie

500 words on TOB today, of which 400 were random notes to myself about things to change in what I've written so far or things to add to my plan for what's yet to come. I read this blog post about Fantasy author
Rachel Aaron's process for storybuilding (following a link from this post on writing 10,000 words a day)(holy shit), and found it was very similar to the process I used with The Owl Bearer-- with one intriguing addition. Aaron says she avoids writing unnecessary and boring scenes by thinking through her whole plot, watching it unfold scene by scene like a movie in her mind. She said it helps her see the story with her "reader" self, and that she finds that some scenes her writer self thought were necessary to the plot are boring to the reader self.

Now, I've certainly thought about TOB as if it were a movie. I've "watched" chunks of it at a time, like skipping around chapters on a DVD, but I've never watched it all the way through from beginning to end. I "watched" it in my mind from the beginning to the scene I'm working on now, and saw a lot to tweak; thus, the 400 words of notes to myself. It was a really valuable exercise, and I'm planning to try to think through more of the story-- the scenes I've planned but not yet written-- tomorrow. I'm feeling excited to finish this draft now, so I can get busy sculpting it into what I see in my head!