Day 25 of writing my novel in public
I’ve started something scary here on Medium. It’s something I’ve done before, but never in public. I have a process that I’m going to follow, and I’d like to share it with you.
If you want to follow the journey from the start, go here.
If you missed yesterday’s, you can find it here.
Day 25 — Act 4 Thread Weaving
Today is a big day. I have reached the last quarter of the scenes for the book I’m writing. This is the exciting part where all the threads that I’ve woven into the story come together in the big conclusion. It is going to be fun.
Before I give the final act thread weaving, I’m just going to review the process so far.
Week 1
- I identified two books that I love to guide the process — the guidebooks
- From these I determined the genre of the book I’m writing, the mission, the main character to carry out the mission, the antagonist and a potential scene where they meet
Week 2
- Expanding my list of characters to include an ally
- Determining the antagonist’s plan, the story spine and additional secondary characters
- Coming up with some funny ideas to include in the book
- Determining the central story thread
Week 3
- Working on story threads for characters, symbols, setting, relationships and phrases
- Combining threads to find my theme
Week 4
- Weaving the story threads into scene outlines, working one quarter of the book at a time, acts 1 through 4
So I have enough to write my book. I haven’t tied everything down because I still want some room to breathe life into the book as I write my first draft, but I hope that I have enough pointers that I won’t feel lost along the way.
So here it is, the final weaving of the threads into scenes for the last quarter of the book.
Reflections
Today I am celebrating reaching the end of my story weaving. I have completed the scene list for the last quarter of the book. I know where the entire story is going, and I’m ready to write.
Tomorrow I will write my first scene.
Please subscribe to get the full series as I write it.
If you want to try the process with me and write your own novel, I’d love to have you join me on this journey. Put in the comments on how you went with this step.