Story mapping

I’ve spent the last year making more progress on writing and plotting and focusing less on actual drawing. Since I started working on finals in 2020, there has been a squishy middle section looming over me. And the closer I encroached, the less confident I’vr becalome in forging ahead.

Naturally with such ambiguity, there has been a lot of waffling, sleeping on various decisions, striking out on a new arm of scenes only to double back and recalibrate. But I think I finally have that muddy middle act clearly defined.

I still need to articulate some of those scenes with dialogue and thumbnails, but it feels like a load off to finally have a road map of the thicket that had been dividing point A and point B.

It's a peculiar stage. Much of what happens in the final set of chapters involve life I’ve lived since starting this project, and revelations that could only ever come with years of distance. I struggle with my glacial pace, but I’m also grateful for the perspective that months of marination and years of living life afford.

In the photo above, I’m organizing the tornado of different storylines into a color-coded map. This is the easiest way for me to maintain a macro view of the story arc and its various angles. Otherwise it is quite easy to get lost in the weeds of endless lines of script.