I know, you probably thought I'd forgotten all about you, but no, I'm still here. As is my first draft. Like an elephant. With a weight problem.
Writing out the draft onto index cards was a helpful exercise, and it's helped me identify more than a few gaps that need a hefty dose of polyfiller. But moving on to actually doing the hard work has been another matter.
On the plus side, I've been going through Scrivener and it seems like it's going to be a really helpful tool for getting everything together. The idea of having all your materials from synopsis, drafts, character profiles and research material all together in the same program is really useful.The ability to easily divide the screen into two windows so you can look at, for example, a synopsis for the chapter while you redraft it in another window seems like it'll be a great help.
Another advantage I'm already making use of is the ability to easily attach photos to the 'index' cards as a synopsis. This means you can write profiles for all your characters then attach photos. In my case, it's photos of the actors I would like to play their part.
This has been a really fun experience for me, but it's already helping me to picture the characters as living breathing people. Whereas my image of the characters tended to change throughout the draft writing process, assigning a specific actor has anchored an image to them. One obvious advantage is that now physical traits won't change over the course of the story. What colour eyes does my protagonist have? Have I mentioned it already? I don't need to worry about contradicting myself anymore. One check of the photo will make sure my descriptions are accurate and consistent.
Another advantage is, having been given physical form, my characters now seem more real to me, having much more depth and personality, which will hopefully translate into the redraft. I look forward to introducing you to them soon.
So what's next? By the end of the day I'm planning to finish writing profiles for all significant characters. Afterwards, I'm going to use the index cards to make sure my story is properly structured, with proper turning points and pacing. Once I'm satisfied, I'm going to input the final index cards into Scrivener to act as 'beats' for the rewrite. And that's how I'm planning on spending my weekend. I've accepted the fact that my draft is going to require more of a full rewrite rather than a quick redraft, but I know I've got 50,000 + words, a lot of which can be salvaged. With more realistic characters and a cleaner structure, I think the rewrite won't be as painful as I first thought.
