Revision: Phase Two

New month, new goals, new phase!

Phase two will last nine weeks, and (assuming I stay on schedule) will take me to Dec. 3. I will be rewriting the key scenes at a rate of one per week, which is a very slow rate indeed. I'm following the rewrite model from The Weekend Novelist Re-Writes the Novel: rewriting the key scenes slowly and methodically, giving yourself a solid structure to build on, and then filling in the rest at a much quicker rate. This is also how he recommends writing the first draft, which if you've been hanging around here for a while you'll know didn't work out so well for me. But it seems to make a lot of sense for a rewrite, so I'm trying it. This could all go out the window if it paralyzes me.

The classic six key scenes from screenwriting structure are:

Opening-- first scene
Plot Point One-- end of Act I
Mid-Point-- some catastrophe in the exact middle of the story
Plot Point Two-- ends Act II
Climax-- very near the end
Closing-- duh

In addition to these, Robert J. Ray recommends including the First Encounter between your protagonist and the principal antagonist as a key scene, and beginning your rewrite with that scene. He also recommends having that scene as early in the book as you logically can, so I'm very pleased that my First Encounter is in scene #2.

So the big six, plus the First Encounter, plus I have two climaxes, so that's eight scenes in eight weeks. The ninth week is vacation: this year, I am taking the week before Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas off from writing. I'm trying to treat this more like a job, and if this was my real, paying job, I'd take those two weeks as vacation days. I host both holidays at my house, plus The Son's birthday is right before Thanksgiving so I'm dealing with putting on a party too, and I just never get anything done.

Today I start work on the First Encounter scene. I'm making this up as I go along, but I'm planning to do two days of prep, four days of writing, and one day of editing.

Goals for today (with time estimates):

1) read the first draft version of the scene. (10 minutes)
2) look over the scene cards for the scene, adding any notes. (10 minutes)
3) make a scene sheet of things that won't fit on the index cards--check GMC, problem/solution chains, worldbuilding details, CUT TO's. (30 minutes)
4) scene freewrite.  (30 minutes)
5) CUT TO's for scene (30 minutes)