As mentioned previously I am thinking of including magic into my story, this will mean working out some more detailed sub-plots that will then integrate into the main plot. However, I have already written a fairly detailed synopsis for the main plot of my story. I think I have a good idea of what the sub-plots will involve, but actually getting over the question of how to integrate them with the main plot seemed to me a major hurdle when faced with several pages of my narrative synopsis.
The problem, I decided, was that I couldn’t see very well what was going in the story. This morning I found some free mind mapping software, FreeMind, and have started using it to work out the events of each sub-plot, with the aim of then incorporating them into the main plot. The great thing is that you can link different nodes on your mind map together, so I can link a node from my sub-plot branch to the main plot branch without too much hassle, and delete it again if it doesn’t fit in. I actually think this is a great way of working out plots, as you can also add notes to each node as well.
What am I talking about? Here’s an illustration of what I have started doing.
It’s difficult to see exactly at this resolution though! The purple line going across is where I have linked two nodes.
Note that I need to go back and write out each part of the main plot synopsis, a slightly laborious job that I have been avoiding.
I hope that when I worked out the structure here, I can then write up the synopsis properly.
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