We interrupt these Reno recaps for a special report

Sorry, guys. I know you’re all waiting with bated breath to hear what happened on Saturday. 😉 But other things in my life are taking precendence. For instance, I may have mentioned once or twice about how I have a deadline at the end of the month? Can you say “Crunch Time?”

I’ve written ten pages so far this week, which, considering that it’s me and I’ve been catching up on day job work and sleep in that lovely post conference “zombie zone” is impressive indeed.

(Secret) Society Girl
48871 / 70000 (69.82%)

(Special thanks to ValMarie for finding me a meter that works on my blog!)

However, what I really want to talk about is the fact that I’ve just made a major change in my novel. (I’m sorry, is that the sound of hyperventilation coming from Manhattan?) Actually, I think the “change” is only “major” to me. I’ve added another chapter – specifically, I’ve divided one planned chapter into two. Regular readers of my blog might remember what a sucker I am for structure, and to me, the chapter breaks are the physical manifestation of the author’s “plan.”

(This is one of the reasons why I could never really get into the Jenny Crusie Plan of novel writing. She thinks chapter breaks are afterthoughts; I think they are paramount.)

But back to the Diana Peterfreund Plan. In the world of my story, every chapter represents a particular step on my protagonist’s journey. (This is why some chapters are longer than others. Occasionally it takes her a while to get certain ideas through her head!) So to divide a chapter, at this point, means I discovered that I had a missing step. Amy couldn’t make it from Point A to Point B without another point in between. I needed a specific, delineated Point A1. Who knew?

Of course, I think this is something that is much more important to get settled in my head than it is to put onto the paper. I went to a workshop with author Julie Kenner a few years back in which she talked about how she had just changed the villain in her story into a different character, and that when she went to do it, she thought it was going to be an enormous amount of rewrites, but there weren’t actually very many changes to be made throughout the text. The really important change went on in her head when she rewrote her thought patterns to make this other guy the villain.

I think I can talk about Process all day. I’m wondering how it will work out when I get to the end. What about the writers who visit my blog? Have you ever made a big change in your book that is a big shift in your head but isn’t reflected as strongly in the actual text?