I am gearing up to begin the next writing project. Today I have been working on the scene list. Actually, I’ve been challenging myself to do it by a plot card scene list.

Normally I just start writing, then end up with a bullet list at the end of my document, which I refer back and forth too. On some novels I keep it in a separate file and use strike through to show what I’ve used, what I haven’t. I used to delete it, but now I keep it because seeing it (something I’ve used to generate an already used idea) will help me sometimes to see where I was just going, or give me ideas by reminding me what gave me one earlier.

If that makes sense.

This time, I thought I would play with plot cards to challenge myself and see what happens with the book. Since I don’t have colored notecards, I just tore a piece of notebook paper in thirds, then half. That makes six square pieces to use. Smaller than a note card, but more per sheet.

As I wrote the POV names on the scene “cards,” I thought, at a glance this is hard to tell which is which. Whose scene I’m looking at. So I grabbed highlighting markers, did blue for male lead, pink for female, and chose orange for “other,” in case I use another POV character. Many are blank, some are not. Yellow is the only other color in these markers I was using so if I needed another that’s the one I’d use.

Also I found a lot of this story I felt like using what came before so ended up with some scenes before the world spiraled down. It’s headed toward post apocalyptic. (Had to pause. Had two more scene ideas from saying that.)

Because of the previous mentioned, I may do something else with this book, which is new for me. Break it into two parts. Before the main events (world falling apart, what leads up). After the world falls apart (essentially present day.)

I’m curious how it’ll affect my performance. Now because I’m not rigid, some of the scene ideas will change as I go, some may stay. I wrote a very general idea just to remind myself the main focus in each scene. And I have plenty of blank cards too, that just have the highlighter border to remind myself how many scenes for each character. That too may change.

I got this from Holly Lisle. Some blogs, some courses.

Here’s what the cards look like before I tackle them more.

Photo accidentally blurred, but it works.

I was being nitpicky about the border so started to wiggle so it’d purposely look wavy cause my hand didn’t wanna do a straight line. 😂 It’s preeeeetty now.

Gonna be working on the cover too, sharing it soon. Still trying to determine the best name for what these individuals will be called. Since this is more post apocalypse and Sci fi, less paranormal, I don’t want to use werewolf or lycan.

Pardon any funkies, doing this on mobile.