Photo credit: tigerlily713 on Pixabay

Another session of editing—tweaking language, moving sections, trying to keep track of timelines. I made a chronology of the first section several weeks ago, but I suspect the time may have come to do it again. Otherwise, I lose track of the order of events and how much time passes between them.

I’ve never heard any other writer talk about mapping out a chronology of their book, but I assume they must do it. How else do they know if the conversation about moving comes in June or November? At least when you’re writing a book about Santa Claus, that’s an important distinction. Most likely, a conversation that important isn’t going to happen in November because everybody at the North Pole will be too busy getting ready for Christmas to focus on somebody relocating. On the other hand, if the conversation is currently placed after a hike in October where everyone is admiring the autumn leaves, either there needs to be a reason for the characters to squeeze it into the holiday rush or the conversation needs to be moved to another part of the book (or the hike needs to be moved to another time of year, with setting details appropriately adjusted) and proper transitions need to be created.

The last time I created a chronology, I printed off two years of calendars and literally assigned a date to each event. It was time-consuming (no pun intended), but I was able to organize and reorganize some cause-and-effect scenes to fit better. I think I’ll need to do it again once I’ve finished adding the new material and transitions.

I’m starting to have a nasty feeling that Draft #3 is not going to be as close to final as I’d hoped.

Photo credit: Andrew Umansky on Unsplash