Notes and that

The longest piece I’ve written to date is a novella which ran at over 37,000 words, in the second draft. It’s still not finished but during the process of writing the first two drafts I covered my walls in notes I’d collected in the building up of the overall idea, the plot and characters. I also put alongside this a painting that had inspired some of the creation of the main female character and how see lived in the world I’d created.

It’s from this that last night I decided to start putting notes and ideas onto my wall to help me keep everything in order – and so that I can see them every time I sit down to write. For now, it’s only small but the idea is that it should grow and help me to piece the plot together. Seeing as private eye novels are known for their complications, keeping organised is sure to help.

Here are a couple of images of the current wall;






I have set up my own code so each colour is for a separate type of note.

Green is for basic scene names that I know I want to fit in at some point of the story.
Yellow is for lines, pretty much fully fleshed out as I’d like them in the final piece.
Pink is dialogue that I have ready to slip in.
Orange is the plot points that I have sorted – and the current order each will take place.

This is a method that a number of writers use (though I’m not sure about their colour coding – if they have any). Here are two examples. The first is a picture of Graham Linehan’s ideas for his television sitcom the IT Crowd. The second is a shot of Will Self’s writing room.



(Source: http://whythatsdelightful.wordpress.com/)



(Source: http://www.will-self.com/writing-room/)