Plotting board redux and Question Week

I feel in limbo right now. I’ve turned in my book to my editor and now I’m just waiting to get started on edits. I’ve taken a full week off of writing and now I’m itching to get back into it — but to what? I have two choices: work on a proposal for SSG3 (which is caling to me since I”m so immersed in that world from SSG2) or do some work on the other, secret, project.

Also, SB has been after me to take down the plotting board. First, however, I think you might be interested in taking a look at my plot. This is what it looks like:

Yep. Purty, huh. There’s a little bit of pink lacking from that third row, but other than that, I think I did a pretty good job spreading it all around.

A few days ago, a man emailed me to ask about using my plotting board (he probably came across my blog during one of the many recent plotting board conversations on the lit blogosphere. Anyway, he wrote:

Hi, Diana! I had a quick question about your plotting board. If each square is a scene and each colored post-it is a plotline, why do most squares have several colors in them?

And because that kind of person, this is what I wrote to him:

There are several colors per scene because most scenes serve several purposes in the development of the story. For instance, I assume you have seen Casablanca. One of the most famous scenes in Casablanca takes place when Victor Lazlo enters Rick’s office and offers to buy the letters of transit. Rick says that even if he had the letters, he wouldn’t sell them to Lazlo. Lazlo asks him why, and Rick says, “Ask your wife.” Immediately afterwards, Lazlo goes to the band and directs them to start playing the French patriotic song to compete with the German singing. The band members look to Rick for confirmation, and Rick nods.

Therefore in one fell swoop we have dealt with three plotlines: the main plotline of the fate of the letters of transit; the romance triangle plotline between Victor, Ilsa, and Rick; and the character arc of Rick growing from a person who values his political neutrality to one who will take a stance and fight against the Nazis.

As far as I’m concerned, if a scene doesn’t serve more than one purpose in the story, it should probably be cut. Exceptions can be made for scenes that are either very short, or are very pivotal to that particular storyline. If you look at my plot board above, you’ll see that one scene is marked with only a purple post-it. Actually, that’s an error that I realized after I took the picture. There should be a green and pink post-it there as well.

Anyway, in honor of this questioner, and the fact that I regularly get questions over email that I answer over email (and then never hear from the person again, but that’s a whole other rant), I thought I’d have Question week here on Diana’s Diversions. So, for the next week, I shall be answering questions on the blog. Email them to the email address listed up there in the profile box, and put “Question for Diana’s Blog” in the subject header.

And finally, big congratulations to Wendy Toliver, who sold her book to Puffin, and Larissa Ione, who is proving that hard work can triumph over adversity, and just made her third sale to her third publisher this year — a three book paranormal romance deal to Warner Forever!