T is for Timelines and Thanks

T is for Timelines. The online editing course I'm taking, How to Review Your Novel, has gotten me to use my scene cards (a previous exercise of recording each scene on a separate index card) and note down the day and time the scene takes place. I'm including the start time and finish time.

The object of this exercise is to catch yourself up on parts where the story does not flow cohesively, but also to think about time of day for your descriptions and actions. Things are easy to find in the daylight and night time is best for sneaky characters.

What did I gain from this exercise? Once all my cards were laid out in time order, I saw ways to shorten the overall timeframe of the story, down from three weeks to just over one week. This provides my narrative a faster moving pace.

Another part of the exercise was to decide exactly what time of year this is all happening, which makes you think about scenery (snow or falling leaves?) and the temperature (bikinis or sweaters?). The full rewrite of Dog Show Detective starts next week!

T is also for Thanks and I have to thank some lovely bloggers for awards! I try to get to everyone's blog every couple of days, the A-Z blog challenge is fun, but when I get back to blogging every couple of days, I'll be able to keep up with leaving comments :-). The awards:

From Mason Canyon at Thoughts in Progress

From Niki at Wool n Nuts

This award is from Angie Paxton at Answering the What if

It was easy to work out who I should pass them onto, because I owe great thanks to my beautiful followers who have made the effort to also follow my daughters (8 & 12yrs. old)  book review blog at Paper Dolls. The girls are absolutely thrilled when they get new followers and a comment is like christmas for them. I appreciate the supportive enthusiasm you've shown (and always feel free to post a link in the comments here, if you know of a young person's blog we should visit), so I want each person to receive all three awards, THANK YOU to:

• Book Dreaming
• Answering the What If
• Writing in the Crosshairs
• Wool N Nuts
• Unedited
• The Watered Soul
• Neat Zine
• The Innocent Flower
• Head in the Clouds
• Dutch Hill News
• Literary Rambles

And, because I've seen the girls working hard to finish books and spend hours on each review, I'm also passing the awards onto Milly and Tilly at Paper Dolls - keep up the good work girls!

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