Tag Archives: outlining

This step has taken me rather longer than I had planned, partly because I did a research trip halfway through and was so exhausted the next day, I couldn’t even look at my index cards, and partly because I’ve had to juggle this work-in-progress with preparations for the launch of The Merchant of Dreams, including guest  Continue Reading »

Alas, despite my best intentions, progress has still been slow. In large part this was down to a combination of an exhausting (though enjoyable) day out in London followed by the hottest weekend of the year, none of which was terribly conducive to labouring over a hot laptop! It’s been frustrating, to say the least,  Continue Reading »

August is upon us, and so I have no choice but to set my nose to the grindstone and start writing the first draft of The Prince of Lies. (OK so I actually started a couple of days ago – don’t tell anyone, all right?) The thing is, I really hate writing first drafts. Really,  Continue Reading »

It suddenly occurred to me this morning that one of the problems I’m having with The Prince of Lies is that it’s more serious in tone than the previous two books. This is somewhat inevitable, since all the conflicts are coming to a climax, but I’ve realised I don’t want to lose sight of the  Continue Reading »

I’m in a Henry V mood at the moment, what with the excellent Hollow Crown (Richard II, Henry IV 1 & 2 and Henry V) running on BBC2, and of course I’m about to launch into my own trilogy finale. As I blogged back in February, this is the first time in five years I’ve  Continue Reading »

It’s been almost three weeks since I finished The Merchant of Dreams and sent it in to my editor, and my Muse is getting restless. I had allowed the whole of February to take a break from these books, but I see my friends tweeting about their word counts and scene-vanquishing and I feel left out.  Continue Reading »

Yay! I’ve finished the dull part of re-outlining, and now my entire plot is on index cards: Oh dear, look at that middle section – so many pink cards! Still, there’s a gratifyingly high number of green and yellow cards in there as well, so hopefully it won’t be that hard to fix Chapters outlined:  Continue Reading »

I spent Sunday working on the outline of The Merchant of Dreams but also playing with some of Scrivener’s more advanced features, particularly regarding outlining. For one thing, I wanted to sync the synopses with Index Card for iPad, but only for the scenes I still need to write. For that I needed a Collection,  Continue Reading »

Over the past couple of weeks I have been preparing to get back into writing the second draft of The Merchant of Dreams. This involved a bunch of research (mainly into 16th-century Venice, the main location I’m using) as well as a whole heap of plot-brainstorming and outlining. I think one of the reasons I  Continue Reading »

Yesterday evening I sent off my final-final version of the manuscript of The Alchemist of Souls to Lee at Angry Robot, to begin the editorial process. So, barring any last-minute fixes, it is now in the form that will make it into print, which means I can’t change my mind about any story elements. Damn!  Continue Reading »