In addition to the primary action of this story, which involves my hero’s flight from danger to safety, she is also going through the emotional journey of accepting her power.
For the purpose of creating my scene outline, I am trying to write beats for each storyline separately. Then, once I have them all in place, I will shuffle them together and try to see where I can combine events from both storylines into a single scene.
This is the first time I am trying to do this, so I am still getting used to the process, and I think I’m cheating a little bit. As I’m building the emotional arc of her acceptance of her powers, I am also looking back at the journey arc and allowing that to influence what I say in the emotional side. I worry that doing it that way is going to result in the emotional arc being illogical, if I accidentally force it to fit the plot side, so I really should be writing these arcs separately. I will try to fix that next time.
These are the two primary arcs for this story, but I think I’m also going to work in a few smaller story arcs for side plots. Those won’t be as in-depth (I’ll only be aiming for the seven basic steps, rather than the full 22, following Truby’s method) and won’t be present in every scene.
The problem with this start of the process is that it really doesn’t feel like I’m making progress. Writing each beat takes a lot of consideration and time, but (deliberately) results in very few words on the page. It’s also an area where I have little experience and confidence, so it is emotionally trying, but I’m continuing to push through. I won’t know if my process has been a success or not until I actually get to the writing!