I’ve mentioned my on-again, off-again work on my YA sci-fi Veritas. When last I mentioned it, I was using Lisa Cron’s Story Genius and her Scene Cards to try to organize my thoughts, deepen the story, and not lose track of the emotional through line. This has been a struggle for me, but I felt I was finally starting to see something.

This week, even though I have not finished the Scene Cards for the whole book, I went in to massage the first 10 scenes, which I had done the cards for. I needed to see how the changes I pondered felt in situ, and see how it changed the flow and tone of the story. This amounts to the first 10,000 words of the story, but I think I need to really get this right before I can go much farther.

I like what I see. While that actual changes to the scenes are relatively minor—added lines here, deleted lines there—the story feels different. By more fully understanding Cron’s third rail—the misbelief that has driven my protagonist for so long—I was able to refocus the scenes and drive the story in a whole new way.

I am a long way from finished, and I will undoubtedly revisit these scenes again. This process is time-consuming for me, and sort of hurts my brain. But I feel it is reaping some rewards for me already, with more to come. I hope that this is like doing a large jigsaw puzzle—at first, and for a long time, it feels like a struggle to find pieces that fit. But as the number of pieces dwindle, they come together faster and faster, until in one burst of puzzling it all comes together.

I’m still at the beginning of the Vertias puzzle. If I get this right, though, and take my time going forward, the story should roll faster and faster on its own, and come together all at once as I near the end.

At least, that’s the dream.

What are you all working on? Are any of you at the beginning…again?