New Ideas, New Mappings for Tales From Vowella

Digging into the manuscript that had been hibernating on my bookcase for several years was not as easy as I thought it would be, but it was still fun. When I had expanded R.J.'s Story from a preface to a full-length novel, I had created sets of circumstances that needed to be carried forward to the stories that would follow. I was glad I had developed my storyboard for R.J.'s Story, because it gave me easy access to those circumstances. I was able to remind myself of every scene of every chapter, which was so valuable as I started to move forward with the stories.

Also, when I looked through the list of "tales" that was included in the remaining 900+ page manuscript, I realized that the original plan to turn the manuscript into a trilogy had to be revised. I already knew that the last tale deserved to be a book of its own, and the collection of tales that stood between R.J.'s Story and the last tale was still too massive to succeed as one book. I needed to find a way to divide the tales and create two books that would work their way toward the last tale, Book 4 (which was to be the last Tale from Vowella, but not the last book in the series).

I listed all of the tales on a new spreadsheet as an overview of the task at hand. Though most of the initial tales involved story lines concerning the individual clans, the list was sprinkled with tales that involved more clan interaction. So I cut and pasted those tales toward the second half of the list. I wanted the stories to progress from simple character and clan situations to more complex community situations. I shuffled and reshuffled until I was temporarily pleased with the flow. I knew there would likely be more cutting and pasting as the story lines progressed. I then drew the line that designated the end of Book 2 and the beginning of Book 3. I decided that Book 2 should be called Innocents, and Book 3 should become Glimmers.

I was now able to make new storyboards for Innocents and Glimmers. I dropped the story (chapter) titles in a row across the top of each page, and listed the original scenes in columns beneath each title. By plotting out all of the components of each story within each book, I allowed myself the opportunity to see how I had previously woven the overall story. I realized that though the structure was already there for me, I had the freedom to do whatever I pleased with it, as long as, in the end, I was happy with the overall series.

The last thing I plotted out at the bottom of each storyboard was a section that listed the characters and the parts they played in the tales. Each tale was a separate story that was part of the larger series theme. But the tales as a whole were also vehicles through which each character revealed his unique story, so I needed to map out some initial thoughts about how each character's story progressed in the overall piece of work.

With new strategy in hand, I sat down and cozied into a new adventure with my Tales from Vowella.