House moves, Post-it notes, and Writing by Jess Butterworth

I was going to write about outlining as part of the structural editing process today, particularly how post-it notes help me visualise and organise story threads, once I have a first draft. I know I’m not alone in this, but I only tried this technique recently and it was so helpful I wish I’d been doing it earlier. With my second novel, When the Mountains Roared, I wrote down the main plot points, each on its own post-it note, and stuck them to the wall.

I was then able to see clearly where events needed to happen in order to create tension, conflict and drive the story forward. I moved all the post-it notes around until the story thread was working the way I wanted it to. The post-it note timeline then helped me keep track of events that were now in the past/future and adjust the other scenes accordingly. I ended up with post-it notes everywhere! 

 

But yesterday I moved house for the third time in seven months; the first involved moving countries and the second involved moving States.

Whilst it’s been an amazing adventure, I’m happy to know I’ll be in this next place for at least a year. And this morning I awoke with a fierce urge to write. I suddenly have another voice in my ear and her story needs to be told. So the outlining blog will have to wait.

Rowena House recently wrote a brilliant blog about outlining. You can view it here: Rowena House and Outlining

Here’s a video of me and my sisters instead. 

And a picture of the kittens hanging out in the wine rack. (They weren’t stuck, I promise.)

Jess Butterworth

@j_t_butterworth (twitter)

@jessbutterworthauthor (facebook) 

Running on the Roof of the World is out now.