Wednesday Blog Post: The Index Card Experiment

I'm trying something new, in regards to outlining the Imperial Story. I've been writing bits and pieces of scenes in my daily writing practice, sometimes inspired by that day's prompt, sometimes continuing the scene from the day before, sometimes I can't get them out of my head. Timeline-wise, these scenes run from the very beginning to the beginning of the end. To try and organize what I've already written, I'm writing out each scene on index cards.

Each card has the basic details of the scene: who's in it, where it takes place, what's going on, who's telling the story. I'm finding that, by writing out these skeleton versions, I'm writing a lot about the middle of the story - Andros discovering his identity, the creation of Briyant and Anitra's Underground. I've also written a lot more than I thought I had; I have cards for 20 scenes and I'm not finished going over everything I have on paper. And to my surprise, some of it, down to the individual lines, is work I'm really proud of.

My idea is to lay all these cards out, group them together by events, and see what I have. What scenes have to come first in order for the later ones to make sense? What scenes are missing from what I've already written? What I'm looking to find is the overall arch of the story and start planning it from start to finish. And, seeing how little I've been wanting to write the actual beginning of the story, maybe that means I'm starting in the wrong place. Writing books recommend starting in the thick of things, so perhaps that's advice I'll take.

I don't know if this is a project to tackle in my daily writing practice and then type up later, or if I devote a couple days a week to it. I do know that I need a structure of some kind before I get anywhere. With my last drafted novel, I used a gigantic mind map to plot out scenes, but for some reason, that doesn't seem to be working with this one.

Has anyone used index cards to help with plotting before? If so, what was your experience? Right now, I'm just entralled to get to spend hours rereading what I've written, wincing at the cliches, but finding the gems too. I'm calling this an "experiment" - we'll see if it creates anything special.