During the early stages of my writing I often got this critique: “Your writing is beautiful but it doesn’t move your story forward.”
You see, I’m in love with words and descriptions–a poet at heart, I guess–sprouting from a space of intuition rather than analysis (the old right brain versus left brain analogy). I came up with a simple solution to this problem.
For my first novel, “Winter is Past,” I didn’t work from an outline. The story evolved from the characters. When I finally accepted the fact that it was important to go somewhere in each scene, I began to outline using italics to identify the “purpose” of each chapter/scene. When it came time to rewrite the entire manuscript, that simple device made it easier for me to eliminate scenes that did nothing to advance the plot.
As an aside, for novel #2, I began with an outline that included detailed character and scene development. That’s not to say I’m following it to a tee, but it’s not a bad thing to work on developing the opposite side of the brain, is it?
Victoria C. Slotto, Author 