When I design a story, I plan by mind mapping and outlining my ideas. From that starting point, I begin navigating the story writing the details. When I discover new things about the story, I make adjustments to the plan and outline. For my current project, the planning between the 50% to 75% marks was rather thin. I had even worried I didn’t have enough ideas to carry that part of the story. That’s no longer a problem.
I’ve been flooded with ideas, so many ideas I didn’t know what to do with them. After creating pages of notes, I decided to write the scenes that are screaming at me, and then figure out which ones go where to control the pacing, push the plot forward, and to tell the story I want to tell. It’s an exciting development.
“It’s time for sleep. Go walk circles.”
The baby dragon tilted his head and said, “Why walk circles?”
“You always walk circles, and do little marching steps, before you lie down for the night.”
“I do not.”
He snorted, went to the sleeping place, walked half a circle, stopped, stared at Hope, and plopped down. He wiggled. He squirmed. He fidgeted. Then he stood, walked two circles, made little marching steps, lay down facing away from Hope, and snorted again.