Friday, December 16, 2005

The Excel Chart Timeline


The other day Louise asked a question . . . and since it's almost lunchtime and too soon to jump into the WIP only to stop for pizza, I thought I'd take a moment to answer it.

Louise was in my fiction track at Glorieta. There I demonstrated how I use a standard EXCEL worksheet to keep track of details in my work-in-progress.

The rows, of course, are assigned to scenes. The columns are these (though you can pick and choose and do what you like):

Chapter number (last thing assigned)
POV character (I like to color code these with "fill color" so I can see how many POVs per character at a glance)
Date/time
Place
Action (abbreviated)
Mood
Others present
Dramatic ? raised
Dramatic ? answered
Weather

The dramatic question asked and answered is something I've begun to worker harder on . . . the object, of course, is to delay the answer for as long as possible, thus keeping your reader in suspense. Simple.

Enjoy this great tool, and my hat's off to Al Gansky, who convinced me to dump my Writer's Blocks in favor of this method.

Angie

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