Retallion Redux Part 2
As a part of the Retallion Redux effort and following the snowflake model I outlined previously I created a template character sheet that I would fill out for my main characters and the antagonist. (They will remain secret for now) This character sheet includes everything from physical appearance, psychology, relationships, and character arcs. These seven page documents were very helpful as I moved through further steps. It was great to have all of this character information at hand ready for reference.
A visible representation of the snowflake outlining model and where I got the method from https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/
This is a sample of some of the things the character sheet covered along with info about their Family, External Relationships, and Psychology.
After I had the characters established it was time to tackle the original outline I had. My original outline was very specific with events and character beats for about half of the story. The second half was left much more vague. I had statements like “And Characters are chased for a while”, or “Villains plan is discovered by heroes”. These were not helpful, and I needed to iron out details.
I found that while I was cementing the second half of my narrative I had to go back to the first half and change things around so there was a logic to the events that was hand waved away before. One of the biggest changes that has been made to the story was the motivation of my antagonist. (Nameless for now) It had been simple revenge before. Revenge that drove them to actions that could undo the world as it was known. That was ok, but it didn’t mesh well with the protagonists, it was almost two separate stories.
After a couple of passes over the outline I changed the motivation to one of redemption through any means. As the protagonists interfere with the plans of the antagonist they become more and more willing to take drastic actions that are more and more harmful to themselves and others.
Once I was satisfied with the outline I had. It came out to eight pages. I moved on to the largest task I had in my plan. Creating a spreadsheet of all the scenes I would need to write to finish the novel. I defined a scene as actions or dialogue that served a common purpose and/or was in a contained location. It started off pretty easy. I already had five chapters written, but with the new outline a good bit needed to still be changed. Those first five chapters ended up being broken up and two more chapters added into the timeline. At that point I was a week into the task and already at 41 scenes. That was when I realized that this was going to take longer and be longer than I had anticipated.
In the end I ended up with 400 scenes across 79 chapters, all written out as a one or two sentence blurb. This took almost three weeks working on and off. Now I had to go back and describe all these scenes. During this pass I also removed some scenes, merged and removed chapters, and created new ones. In the end my spreadsheet consisted of 376 scenes across 77 chapters along with an interlude chapter and an epilogue. This was an invaluable experience. When I was done I had the whole of my story in front of me. I could see its shape, the details. It was time to write. And so I took a break for two and a half months…
