So, on Wednesday just gone I finally reached the end of my pre-Beta revision process!

There are a few things I’d like to comb through again and straighten out, but the reality is that fixing them before Beta could possibly be an enormous waste of time because it’s entirely possible that the whole thing might get flagged up as being in need of a complete re-write.

I seriously hope not though.

Migrating Into Scrivener.

As promised I have a few thoughts on how I buggered up the process of moving from Google Docs / MS Word to Scrivener. Here they are in no particular order.

Character Sketches.

On moving into Scrivener it would have been an awesome idea to read through each scene and make sure every character was properly represented in it’s own Character Sketch. For instance, one of the key characters in the story is Kate and, beyond the representative photograph and her schedule of days off, I have no description or notes at all.

Now, I have a clear vision of her in my head, so keeping continuity with her probably hasn’t raised any issues. But that’s just it, I don’t know and can’t say for sure, so on a next revision, I’ll be making sure that the Character Sketches are complete for everyone who appears in the story, even if it’s just once.

Reference Notes.

This isn’t the issue for The Old Man that it’s going to be for Lock Out Tag Out, but it would be nice to have collated all of my references in one place, the Research section looks a good place to do this.

I’ve tried to make sure that most of the elements that I’ve included, which I think important, have a referent in the real world. In some instances I’ve looked for expressions of particular viewpoints in the real world, in others, I’ve based events on those I’d been inspired by, also in the real world. It would have been a good idea to collect all of that in one place. That way, I could defend against anyone expressing disbelief in something someone says in the story or some event is appearing too contrived. Think Apollo 13 where Mrs. Lovell’s loses her wedding ring – this actually happened.

Color Coding.

Right toward the end of the pre-Beta revision I started playing with color coding the Scene Labels. I’d rather do it with the Scene Status, but that doesn’t support color coding. My goal was to color code where each scene’s position in the edit process so opening Scrivener up there was a visual indicator of where I was in the process and how far there was to go.

This might not be quite so useful as color coding the actual purpose of the scene, as I will for Lock Out Tag Out, but by the time I imported the manuscript into Scrivener, the scene purposes were pretty well established.

Place Sketches.

Very much like the Character Sketches, but I’ve utilized them even less, which is actually quite an achievement.

Up Next…

Well, I’m pretty much on schedule to start looking for Beta Readers next week, once I have a plan dealing with how I want to go about it. I found a web site, CritiqueMatch, a little while ago which had the purpose of linking up Beta Readers (and Critique Partners, amongst other things) and I’ll be hitting that up again once I’ve got some sort of plan together, which will probably be by the end of this week. I’ll announce it here, hopefully next blog post.

Checking my calendar, it’ll be about the 14th or 15th of October, the other side of Fall Break, before I can get the Beta Process underway, so there’s time. The intervening time I can be using to collate everything together for Lock Out Tag Out, including perhaps a last bit of research with Decade of Betrayal, which deals with the ‘repatriation’ of Mexicans – many of whom were birthright U.S. citizens – during the Great Depression. Trouble is, this book is bloody expensive, and I’m also keenly aware that I haven’t collated my notes on Infamy yet, so I’ll need to get to work on that too.

Meanwhile, this week looks like it’s going to be hot and sunny, so I hope everyone gets to enjoy the last full week of Summer. Fall officially begins next Monday.

Perhaps somebody could let the weather know…

Categories: Beta Readers, Character Sketches, Critiquematch, Decade of Betrayal, Place Sketches, Research, Scene Labels, Scene Status, Scrivener, Scrivener, The Old Man, Work Update

Tags: Critiquematch, Finding Beta Readers, Migrating into Scrivener, Scrivener, The Old Man