I’m within a scene of finishing Giving Thanks, one of the two m/m stories I have appearing as individual e-books from Aspen Mountain Press and as part of the Hot Comforts anthology from ManLoveRomance Press.

This story has an interesting history to it. I had been in a chat with Jet Mykles and Anne Cain where our discussion turned to the lack of Thanksgiving themed stories, especially Thanksgiving themed male/male stories. At some point the conversation devolved to specifics and one of them threw out the idea of a food-based story where the guys use gravy as lube. Of course my know-it-all self had to interject that gravy would be too grainy and butter would be better.

Next thing I knew they’d challenged me to write that scene.

I have a horrible personality flaw that makes it nearly impossible for me to resist a challenge. Especially from people I respect. ‘Nuff said.

So I cooked up a scene with Derek and Troy and had a nice little story idea around it. It was maybe 2K words. As you may know if you read my blog, I write a weekly flash fiction free read and those are usually 750 words or so. So a 2K scene is not so out of character. But I did have enough done that I liked it and knew I wanted to finish the story. The question was who to sell it to – I knew it wouldn’t be very long, maybe 8k, and there aren’t many houses that take that might take a contemporary male/male story that short.

At this point I decided to get a few people to look at what I had and give me a sanity check on whether it was worth finishing. It was the first male/male story I’d written and I do have these issue with “suckitis”. So I sent it to a couple of friends who I trust to tell me the truth. They liked it and encouraged me on.

Okay, so it was worth finishing, but I still didn’t know who to sell it to. I was chatting with Laura Baumbach a few days later and mentioned my quandry then asked if she had advice on who to send it to when it was done. To my surprise, she asked to see it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have sent it to her, honestly. I don’t like to presume on friendships and I’m hugely mindful of not calling in favors. I play by strict rules, maybe to an idiotic level in some people’s eyes.

I sent it and spent a little while biting my nails off. I honestly expected a lovely critique that pointed out all the things I’d done wrong. Maybe even telling me to not give up my day job and stick to het stories.

Instead she asked if she could buy it. I had to pick myself up off the floor. Really.

So I signed a contract, then one for another idea I had (Bittersweet, though I didn’t name it for quite a while). Then I started trying to work on it … and trying…. and trying.

This story kicked my ASS.

I have spent more time writing, deleting 99% of it, writing some more and repeating that cycle than anything else. I’ve probably written 25K to get 9K of usable wordcount.

Today I realized what at least one of my problems is. I tried to pants this story and it’s too long for ME to be able to write by the seat of my pants. Most deletions have been because a scene wasn’t moving the story along. It wasn’t serving a purpose. This happens when I don’t know my plan of getting to the end.

No more writing stories without a storyboard for me. As soon as I’ve turned this in, I’m putting together the storyboard for Bittersweet. I refuse to go through this again.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know, but there it is :)

So – my apologies – I can’t find the bleeping charger for the camera’s special batteries so today will have to be sans photos. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Anyway…..

Last week I showed everyone the POV Summary post-its up to chapter three and how I got into a situation where the POV Summary didn’t match the Plot Details. Then I rewrote the POV Summaries to better match the Plot Details.

Finish the POV Summary Post-Its
The next step is to continue through the rest of the chapter boxes and write the POV Summary post-its for each scene. I double-check each one to makes sure it agrees with the Plot Details.

I don’t necessarily do this in order. Often I know the scene where a major revelation takes place so I’ll put up the POV Summary for that scene, then I’ll go back and decide what scenes need to take place to carry my story from the prior major plot point.

Evaluate the POV balance
The next thing I do is stand back from the storyboard and unfocus my eyes a little so I don’t get caught up reading the words. I look at the entire storyboard to try to get a basic feel for the balance of different POV’s in the story.

My stories are often a bit weighted toward the heroinne but I try to keep it pretty even. I’ve had a few times where the POV was heavily weighted toward one character or another and that often leads to readers feeling as if they are distanced from the character they don’t hear as much from. They don’t get as much of a chance to know that character from the inside out.

In those cases, I go back through the scenes and look for opportunities to change the POV of a scene.

I mostly write third person, so the rules for first person wouldn’t really apply here, your POV is always one character. In the case of the first person story I plotted out, I instead used two shades of pink and one was external focus, one was internal focus.

Add Reference Notes
I’m very prone to forgetting things like eye color, etc. and because I don’t want to page back through the document to look for the details, I create some Reference post-it notes. I use the lined 4×4 post-its and put these on the storyboard far enough below the last row of the chapters so that they don’t visually interfere but where I can easily see them.

Start Writing
By now I’m ready to start writing this story. The plot is a lot clearer to me and I have a good idea where I’m going. Some people take the post-it notes for the scene they are working on to their computer but I take the whole board and prop it up near the desk.

Modify as You Go
Things still change during the actual writing of the story. At least every two chapters, I sit down and look again at where the story is going and whether I need to make changes to the storyboard. Sometimes I have items appear that are important to the story and I need to show them to the reader at least three times to make them memorable. I typically add little post-it notes for these to places they should appear.

I am careful, however, to not just let myself ditch the storyboard and go off on some tangent on the spur of the moment. If I start to think the storyboard won’t work, I STOP writing and redo the storyboard in whatever new vein is important.

If I make decisions on things that I need to use later (appearance, family relationships,etc), I add those to the Reference notes.

Next week I’ll talk about pitfalls I’ve found and things I’ve tried but this is the meat of the information. It’s really not that complicated and there is no magic formula that works for everyone.

Give Action to Turning Points
By now I have a vague idea of what Plot Details the Plot Points will correlate to. These are pretty darned vague at the moment, though, and I may not know all of them because I’m building it as I go.

The first thing I do is take a post-it note in my Plot Detail color (small orange ones in this case) and add a very brief (only a word or two) to the Plot Points. This gives me an idea of what happens of significant note at each of them.

Inciting Event
In this case I didn’t add a note for Inciting Event because I already knew what it was (because I’m going into the storyboard with two chapters already written.) If I was to write one, it would say “Meet at work training”.

TP1
This is one I’m not sure how I’m going to handle it, so I leave it blank for now. Notice that I didn’t put a blank orance note on it. I want it to be obvious that it’s missing its Plot Detail.

TP2
This one now says “Ex-husband shows up.”

Midpoint
This one is “Melissa discovers Erik is a shifter.”

TP3
This is “Melissa’s House is burglarized.”

TP4
This is now “Ex kidnaps Melissa”

Resolution
I don’t actually tend to write a Plot Detail note for this one because I write romances and it would just end up being “HEA”.

Notice that these are an escalation. Each one should feed on the one before and build the tension of the story and the characters. Each should build the tension of the story. This one goes from meeting and lusting after each other, to the threat of the ex showing up, to the discovery that Erik is a coyote shifter, to the burglary, to the kidnapping.

Here’s how the board looks:

Add POV Scene Summaries
Now you need to start writing POV Scene summaries in the larger Post-It notes in the color of the POV character. If you change your mind about whose POV the scene should be in, rewrite the note in that color. This becomes important later when you are looking at visual balance of color to tell you whether the story is too heavy in a single POV.

In my case, I already have the first two chapters of this story written. I took those chapters and translated them into POV notes, then placed those notes in the correct chapter.

Then I wrote what I thought were my notes for Chapter Three. Here’s what the storyboard looks like at this point:

Each time you complete a chapter’s worth of the POV Summaries, you should look at what you wrote and make sure that the summaries actually make sense with the Plot Detail. Do they make it happen? Does it make sense with the chapters that procede it? Fixing it now will save you from fixing it later or complaints that it doesn’t make sense.

And here’s a closeup of Chapter Three’s square:

If you read the POV notes, you’ll see that they don’t really match the Plot Detail note. The POV summaries sound more like a sweet innocent lunch date, not a “can’t resist each other”.

So I rewrote those POV summaries into this new version:

Notice that this is now MUCH more in line with the Plot Detail. Now they’re kissing and necking.

The idea of having the assistant be a werewolf was one of the little things that appear. Even in plotting and storyboarding there is room for these whims and ideas to show up.

Add Sex Notes As You Go
Notice that the Chapter Three revised picture has new little notes – the ones in yellow are my Sex notes. I want the sex to escalate as well and in this chapter they kiss and neck so I’ve made notes to be sure I know where the characters are in the intimacy arc.

Continue this Process
Now I have to continue this same process through the rest of the storyboard.

Next week I’ll show you the completed board and any other notes I may have added and talk about how it translates into the actual story.

Preparation:
You need to have your collection of post-it notes and pens. I actually keep all mine in one of these clear paint cans people use for crafts. It has the advantages of looking nice, keeping them all together and clean and, best of all, the paint can is very hard for my six year old son to pry open!

Then you need to divide your storyboard into chapter squares. I use a plain old wooden yardstick and a sharpie and divide it into six inch squares. It ends up looking like this when unfolded and propped up.

Most of the time I won’t show you the full storyboard. We won’t use nearly the whole thing for my sample story and you’ll want to read the post-it notes more than you’ll want to admire the empty landscape.

Note that I don’t number the squares. I know some people do but if I have several small stories, they may all live on the same board just in different areas. If it really bothers you, feel free to number yours or use a small post-it or even a flag for the numbers.

I also seem to work best at two scenes per chapter. So each square will have two scenes in it. One of the reasons I use the size post-it notes that I do is that two sets of one large plus four small ones will fit in each square. I like to be able to see it all at a glance, if I can. I don’t like to stack them. The top half of each square is always scene one and the bottom half is scene two.

Setting Your Story Length:
Now is when you really have to decide about how long your story is going to be. This can actually be done several different ways.

Formula
If I know how long I want the story to be (or it’s required to be), I can use a formula to determine the number of chapters. The basic formula is:

Desired Wordcount / Average words per chapter = number of chapters needed

So if I wanted a 60,000 word story and I know I write about 2,500 words per chapter, I would need twenty four chapters. Always round up.

Chapter Count
If you are doing a serial, you may know that you need to have a certain number of episodes or chapters. This is how Games Coyotes Play is set up. I knew I wanted the story to run for a year, so I knew I needed twelve chapters.

Mark the Start and End
The next thing I do is mark the real start of the story – the Inciting Event. I always put it at the very beginning because I have a bad habit of trying to introduce too much backstory before the real story starts. It helps to keep me honest.

I stick a small post-it in my plot point color (it’s really lime green, despite the pics) labeled “Inciting Event” on the board.

Then I put a plot point post-it labeled “Resolution” in the last square.

Now my storyboard looks like this:

Add Midpoint
Now I find the middle of the story and put a plot point post-it labeled “Midpoint” in that square.

Add Basic Turning Points
Now, still with the plot point post-its, I add the other two turning points to create the basic story structure I use.

A “TP” post-it is placed midway between “Inciting Event” and “Midpoint”. Another “TP” is placed midway between “Midpoint” and “Resolution”.

Make Pacing Adjustments
Now I step back and look at what I have and make adjustments if I think I need to. In the case of “Games Coyotes Play”, I do need to.

This is a serial story so it has no real ongoing momentum to carry it forward. That means it can’t tolerate much in the way of lag or really slow spots. When I look at the storyboard shown in the last step, I see a lot of empty squares. Those are points the story can lose momentum.

It can also benefit from the second half of the story moving faster.

In this case, I decided that I needed to add two more turning points and shift the midpoint and the third turning point. You can see in this photo that the midpoint has shifted one chapter later and an additional “TP” is now inserted midway between the first “TP” and “Midpoint”.

The next thing was to move the “TP” after the Midpoint to a scene earlier in the story and inserted a new “TP” post-it between it and the Resolution. But in this case I put it the chapter before the resolution and also labeled it the “BM” for Black Moment.

Now when I step back and look, it’s in better balance and not too bare. This is a good start to a well-paced story.

Come back next week for the next installment and I’ll start to show the POV notes.

Comments and questions are always welome :)