I just wanted to post a comment on this here. I started using Scapple (which I almost always call Scrapple for some reason) earlier this year to draw out a schematic for the multiple plot story of my first book. I loved it, but didn’t need it as I completed the final scenes of the story.
Then I stopped using it.
But now I am half way through my second book and really struggling to develop ideas for the plot to develop, and to create uncertainty and suspects for the plot. I was struggling to get a ‘feel’ for the flow of the story as-a-whole. So I dug out Scapple again today purely by chance and drew out the flow of the plot and major players.
Immediately I started to see the bigger picture and the shape of the storyline, and get ideas for a new direction and a partial rewrite of the previous two chapters.
Scapple is a gem of a little app I have to say. I really recommend it.
How exactly did you use Scrapple? Writing my first draft and trying out different techniques. I’ve already found that I’m more of an outliner than pantser, for instance.
I create a ‘flow chart’ kind of layout. Partly based on major incidents and partly on characters. I make the core plot flow straight downward and interactions with people or organisations or other with that plot alongside on the left and right, connected with arrowed lines, of appropriate direction.
As the plot flows down, if specific characters are expected to have significant interactions (not just conversation etc.) then I will connect them with a dotted line.
I tend to use the left two thirds for this, and I use the right third of the page (landscape) for bullet points in parallel to the progress of the plot down the page.
Right now the plot is continuing for me and instead of continuing down the page into what the printer would see as a second page, I have decided to start a new document using the contents of the first document, except pushed up, with the top cut off. The reason for this, for me, is so I can print them to take to the cafe etc with me
When I write, my left lobe inevitably robs time and energies from right. Analysis dominates creativity. But creative generation and exploration is where material to analyze comes from.
Scapple is a way to restore creativity. I Scapple material to outline and draft in Scrivener.
Google the common, creative brainstorming technique, known as: clustering, mapping or webbing. Scan of few articles. Check a few images. Get the gist. Then use Scapple to perform this electronically and non-linear.
