S02E02: Rewrites and Flashcarding - TRANSCRIPT

Season 2, Episode 2: Rewrites and Flashcarding - TRANSCRIPT

Hello again, and welcome back to Hyba is Writing! It has been a very long while. Since April, I believe. And here we are in June. Sorry to have kept you waiting so long!

I may or may not have mentioned this on my blog, but I've been working hard on a couple of very big and important projects, one of which is academic in nature and so it definitely takes priority these days. The good news is that that one should be finished within a couple of months at the most, so we'll be getting back to some form of schedule soon. Until then, though, I hope you bear with me and my irregular uploading schedule, both here on this podcast and over on my blog.

Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a couple of things that have happened since I last recorded an episode. First and foremost, I've made a very important decision concerning The Pirates of Sissa that is going to most definitely result in a complete overhaul.

You see, back in April, I started plotting out my books. It sounds a bit funny, but I think I may have misunderstood what a plot actually is until I was doing some research on literary elements one night and it clicked in my head that I'd been trying to plot all wrong. Anyway, long story short, I decided that I needed to use my newfound knowledge to plot my books The Fall of the Black Masks and The Pirates of Sissa and see if that can help me figure out why I simply can't seem to get anywhere with them.

The Fall of the Black Masks was surprisingly easy to plot, so I had fun with that. It was quick, and I was done in about ten to fifteen minutes. Happy ever after. Well - until I sit down and continue writing it and the inevitable issues pop up, but that's something to figure out later. The Pirates of Sissa, on the other hand? It… didn't go so well.

The good news was that I was right: plotting was definitely my issue for The Pirates of Sissa, and the main reason why I wasn't able to progress in my story. The bad news was that I couldn't seem to think of a good enough plot. I knew the beginning, and I knew the end, and everything in-between was this murky swamp of question marks that taunted me in my nightmares. Okay - so, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I think you get the gist. I needed to figure out the plot, and fast.

Flash-forward to almost two months later, and I only just got to work on the plotting a few days ago as of my recording this. Talk about fast! Anyway, I'd just sat down and made flashcards of my murder mystery novel, Marie/Elise - which, surprisingly enough, is what I've been working on pretty much every free moment I get these days - and the process worked so magnificently well for me that I thought, "Hey! Let's do this for Pirates!"

And so I did. And it was great. So, if you're not familiar with plotting or the flashcard method, here's how I went about it. First, you have to make sure you understand that a plot is meant to be a series of events and their consequences. It's essentially a chain of cause and effect. Once I had that in mind, it was very easy to organize my story and identify the plot points that I wanted. I wrote one plot point per flash card.

I actually have them right here with me. So, for example, my first flash card for The Pirates of Sissa says: "Kutsila decides to infiltrate border patrol base. Sahra follows to stop her. They get arrested." It's immediately followed up by a plot point in which Vadra receives the Emperor's offer, which wouldn't have happened if Sahra and Kutsila weren't arrested. Cause and effect. The rest of the flash cards continue on like so, although it's not necessary, in my opinion, to have the cause and effect illustrated in two consecutive cards. For example, the plot point in my fifth flash card is the cause of the plot point in the fifteenth flash card. Just don't overload your flashcards with unnecessary information.

There are a bunch of scenes that I am going to be writing that haven't made it onto flash cards, simply because they're not necessarily the most critical of scenes, though they do definitely help set those important scenes up. It's up to you to decide which scenes and information you want to add in which cards. For example, in Marie/Elise, which is a murder mystery, I like to add important details in specific cards - clues that I can keep track of throughout the story, like items.

Another neat thing about flashcarding your plot is that you can move things around. I've done that quite a bit with Marie/Elise especially, where I start re-arranging parts of the story into an order that makes more sense. Because everything is in separate flashcards, it's easy to keep track and visualize how the plot progresses.

So, that's that! I now have a new plot. And it's beautiful. Characters that were killed off early in the old plot end up living through to the end. Characters that existed in the old plot no longer exist in this one. There's a generous amount of tension and action. And, as much as I adore my previous draft, I have to admit, this is looking a heck of a lot better. The story has evolved and I am excited to dive right in!

But, this means a rewrite. A complete rewrite. I think I'll probably end up Frankensteining some bits and pieces here and there from my old draft, but for the most part it's going to be shiny and new! It's interesting how much quicker I can write when I've been motivated and inspired, when things seem to have finally fallen into place. I want to sit down and get everything out on paper in a feverish week-long writing craze. Alas, I have other things to do, and other more pressing matters to attend to, like that academic project that's been not at all stressing me out. Not even a little bit.

So, I used flashcards for the first time in my life to work on a story. And I've decided on a much cooler plot for The Pirates of Sissa, which will hopefully give it that little bit of something that I felt it was missing for so long. Does it bug me that this means scrapping over 80,000 words? Yeah, a little bit. But not much, because I'm more excited for how the book is going to turn out now that I've finally figured it out! There will definitely still be the added challenge of representing the themes and issues that I want to broach within the book, and how I can make some of them fit into the story if I no longer have certain scenes, but I figure I'll get to that when I get to that. For now, I'm just glad to know which direction the compass is pointing on this book.

That's all for this episode! I will do my best to be more regular in my podcast uploads, but I make no promises. If you haven't already, make sure to check out my blog or connect with me on my social media! All the links can be found in the episode description. You can also check out my eerie suspense novella Apartment, which is currently out on ebook and is also linked below. I really look forward to sharing more information on the worldbuilding and fun facts about Sissa and the world that The Pirates of Sissa is set in, so I hope you stay tuned for more episodes.

Thanks for listening to me today, and I hope you enjoyed this episode. Until next time!