So Graham and I have both expressed our views on what scene drafting did for our storytelling. Providing a timeline, the structure, and the pacing, our overall narrative was taking shape before our eyes. But now that it was there? What do we do?

Well, for me, this was simple. I was done. Planning was complete, on to the next outline. Right? But oh, no… that was just the first part of it. While Graham will tell you, it surprised him when I started to write, don’t believe it all. Deep down, I know he was influencing me, dragging me into the darkside. Tempting me with writing, egging me on. And well, it worked. And I love him so much for it!

It started simply. I had “visuals” in my head. Things that I felt needed expressed to show the scene as it was in my mind. It started with casual descriptions, then a line of dialogue or two, and then I was attacking entire scenes. But how, how did I select them?

Tentpoles.

There were pivotal scenes that I knew what we wanted. Scenes like Symon’s introduction, Jesse and Symon becoming friends (different from when they first meet!), when Symon first discovers his Gift of magic, and meeting the Master of Shadows for the first time, all invoked VERY specific images in my mind.

So I first wrote my “outline” of Symon’s introduction. Graham poked me… “can you give me more dialogue here? What would Kyrn (Symon’s father) say here? etc. So I would write a bit more.

Then I wrote an attempt at action! The scene where Jesse and Symon begin their friendship. It was rough, my perspective viewpoint was everywhere, my tense was all over the place, it was a tangled mess. But Graham just said.. “I like where this is going… but do you know you have a tendency to switch tenses? And whose view are we looking through?” And then he highlighted sentences that were causing the problem.

I had known I had an issue with that, it’s why I was hesitant to write, but suddenly, it became clear. And it was able to be overcome. So when I got to Symon discovering his Gift. There was no illusion of an outline. I knew, KNEW, what that scene was going to be.

I detailed the city, the sights and sounds that surrounded him, I dove into the description of his first spell, how it worked, how it made him feel. I was IN! And then, because of how it ended, I knew what the next scene looked like as well. And then, writing that scene, I had a spark of a scene earlier in the book where foreshadowing could be present, and so on and so on.

So now, I look for my Tentpole. I write a scene that inspires me. One that has a clear vision in my mind. Then I leverage what I write there to move to another. Then I can write the bridges in between, filling them with rich layers of world building given to me by Graham.

On our weekend Discord calls, we talk about the Tentpoles that mean something to me, I’ll lay out the ideas I’m thinking. Graham will ask me those “tempting” questions that make me dig deeper into my inspiration well, and then set me loose. But, every once in a while… I’ll drop a phrase, something innocuous, that sends him into the same inspiration rabbit hole that he’s put me in. These calls, these phrases, have led to mythology that we didn’t plan, political intrigue that was unexpected, and even full characters that we didn’t know we needed but can not imagine our story without (I’m looking directly at you Lara!).

Overall, scene drafting lets me set the poles in place. Organizes the structure and frees me to follow my inspiration in an organized and methodical manner. And when each scene finishes, I am more likely to have triggered inspiration for either myself or Graham to tackle a new scene which causes the dominos of creativity to topple.