Plot board

Although Rowling uses the word ‘plot,’ notice her outline isn’t one chaotic column that’s trying to track everything.

What is a Plot Board? A Plot Board is a tri-fold board divided into a three-act structure to represent your story. You use post-it notes to list all the scenes for each act. This is a visual way to…

For all the writers reading this blog, here’s my cheat sheet for the Plotting Board Method of plotting, which I learned from Cherry Adair. The Cherry Plo...

How to make a plot board to organize your story as you write it.

For my latest revision, I’m working out some plotting and pacing issues. And, since I own bright neon mini PostIts, it was time to go to the magic board: Main and subplots are listed across the t…

Okay, I promised some blogs about my plotboard. Now, I can’t claim to have invented the idea – far from it – but I’ve been tweaking my own approach to using index cards and pins to help me visualise my book for about six years now. I’m quite a visual thinker and it helps me to ‘see’ the structure of my book this way. It also provides a place to put all those ‘lightning bolt’ ideas I get about my book before, during and after the first draft. You know the kind of ideas I mean: the ones you…

Are you planning on writing a novel? Click on the link to see how I organize my novel with a plot board!

Cards and drafts I thought I’d mention a bit about how I use the cards and Post-Its on my plotboard before I get into detail about the d...

A plot board is deceptively simple. It packs way more of a punch in your writing than you would expect from a piece of tri-fold cardboard and some sticky notes. I learned about this tool from the…

Writing a book is hard. Planning out a book can be maddening. One of the annoying speed bumps that can come up when crafting a story is the need to ferry characters between plot points. Your story structure template or goal word count may advise that you ought to have something happen between Chapter A […]