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Nose to the grindstone.

Today began full on revision mode.  My wonderful editor, Taryn, recommended I do a slimmed down version of a shrunken manuscript.  In a normal shrunken manuscript you would resize your whole manuscript to fit on approximately 30 printed pages, then mark up the passages with a color coded key.  Each color representing a different aspect of your storyline.  This shows you where there arch of your story is going and the over all strength and weaknesses of the manuscript.
This is what a normal shrunken manuscript ends up looking like.

 The way Taryn recommend I do it, is to condense each scene into one sentence and put that on a post  it.  I printed out my manuscript.
Two typed pages per printed page. This thing is still huge.

I decided to keep the color coding idea.  So I am going through my manuscript and making the scenes in their colors. (Green = setting/world, Purple/pink = character development of main character,  Orange = building of love interest, and Blue = main protagonist activity.)  


Tonight I tackled the first chapter and ended up with this.

The symmetry was not intentional, but I think it is a good sign.
From now on my goal will be mapping out three chapters each night.  With 30+ chapters I should have it all done within two weeks.  Once that is done, I will examine my map and see what scenes need to be cut, where scenes need to be added, and where the storyline will (inevitably) change completely.

And I thought writing the book would be the hard part.  LOL

Next update will be about 2 weeks from now when you'll see this board COVERED in bright post it notes.
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