Writer Thursdays – Breaking Out the Beat Sheets

Welcome to Writer Thursdays, where I unpack my novel writing process from start to finish.

My new novel’s working title is: PETALS & DUST.

Rereading the Story

Someone get me a beer please. Heavy on the clamato. When I said dumpster fire, I may have been a little too nice. But now that I’ve given it a read, I have a pretty good sense of what the story is and how I want it to look after the next revision. For starters:

• The story starts in the wrong place. Too late, actually. So, one of the first things I’ll have to do is write a real beginning. And since I’m purposely creating this story as a Fantasy Romance, the heroine will need to meet the hero right away.
• There are too many portal worlds in this version. One of them will have to be deleted, or some will have to be merged.
• The overall structure is dreadful, but this was written long before I studied and understood this element to fiction novels.

All of this means that on the structure alone, I have a lot of work to do. Thankfully, I have an awesome SFF mashup structure I use for my novels.

The Plan

But this time, the structural mashup isn’t going to be enough. I need to target the romantic element specifically to meet its own beat requirements. All I gotta say is, Jami Gold to the rescue.

I use a 4-act structure (breaking Act II into two acts around the midpoint), but already I recognize a lot of these beats. So the trick is to merge them into the fantasy template so I’m tackling story, escalating conflict, and romance in a trinary DNA strand, each one revolving around the others and weaving together.

As I find each element in the story, I can break them out into their own sections or chapters and label their correct position for beat moments. Once I have all these pieces scattered about Scrivener, writing the story through the backbone is going to be a whole lot easier.

Do you have a method that works for you? Feel free to share in the comments below! 🙂

If you like this article, be sure to check out Writer Thursday for more on my adventure from dumpster fire to digestible story. You can also subscribe to this blog and be the first to know when new content is delivered.