Then What Happens?

With the major plot points worked out for Book #2, Series #1, thanks to Cathy Yardley's Rock Your Plot, I have the basic framework of the story before me.

For the eight major plot points, I have eight scenes already planned, with their Goal, Motivation, Conflict, and Disaster depicted.

The novel will have, at a minimum, 60 scenes, so I now have 52 scenes that need to be placed on my Index Card or MS Word Table road map. (More than likely both!)

I look at Scene #1, the Inciting Incident, then ask myself, "Then what happens?"

I do this until I get to Plot Point #1, then repeat.

As I explained to a writer friend who's considers herself a Pantser, which is someone who writes without a plotted course, and says she just "lets the book come out," the Rock Your Plot method is not a fill-in-the-blank formula.

Writer friend writes quite a bit of material that she discards, but claims that her overall writing is better because of the twists and turns the direction of her writing takes, as she finds her way through the story. The Pantser process works for her.

For me, having some sort of direction tends to keep me on the road, headed in a forward direction, with an idea as to where the road/story is headed next. Writer friend says that I'm a Plotter, because I plot out the scenes of my books ahead of time.

Either way, I'm glad us Plotters and Pantsers can get along and encourage and support each other.

So now, back to my list of Plot Points and Scenes. What's next? THEN what happens?