Spidergraph, flowchart or the even better word my daughter reminded me of the other day which I have already forgotten, whatever you call, it can be a useful device for novel planning.
I drew one up for a particularly complex essay when I did my MA. A beautiful one, colour-coded boxes, lines, arrows both single and double ended and different colour texts, and proud of my efforts, I emailed a copy to my youngest son.
He was scathing: “You’d’ve been better using pencil and paper” he said, not understanding that the only way such a chart could be done on the computer was after a lot of scribbling and re-drawing, ultimately repetitive and frustrating because of the need to re-draw every correction.
I thought to resurrect it in preparation for my November novel, deleting the text which referred to seventeenth century parish registers and overseer’s account, kinship and bastardy, and substituting characters: Bridie, Sean and Christy, and plot lines: B + C discovered by S, big row between J + E, etc etc.
But all I currently have are a load of empty and irrelevantly coloured boxes, parked beside rows and rows of arrows, both horizontal and vertical, like spears awaiting battle.
[This piece originally appeared on 6S, 19th September, with many comments, including the words "Mind Map" which I had forgotten]
Only two weeks away! I've given up on outlining because it just became a terrible mess. I think I'm going to stick to my original plan and just lock my characters in my head and see what they do!
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