Extra Plush

For the past couple days, I've been filling in my YA's first act.  

The goal: deepen my story and characters, and tighten the plot by stringing together some of the manuscript's (many, many, many) loose ends.

The big fear: PADDING.

To me, padding is: events that don't cause other events, or aren't direct consequences of other events.

So, before I started writing, I created a document called "SET UPS" and skimmed my manuscript.  Every tidbit or event or relationship that caught my eye in the manuscript (or at least those I didn't feel I had mined to death) were put in the "SET UPS" docu.

My biggest set-up happened to be "RELATIONSHIP WITH MOTHER" (other set ups were: "BOOKS," "TALKING IN CODE," "NEW V. FULL MOON"- they weren't all deep).  

So yesterday, I created a (relatively minor) confrontation between the Pro. and her mother.  Today, I had trouble coming up with something else to mine, so I went on with "RELATIONSHIP WITH MOTHER" (too keep the new material grounded, and contingent on what came before/what's coming next, ie, not padding).  But today, I concentrated on info/events based on  "NEW V. FULL MOON."

Tomorrow, I'm not sure which set ups I'm going to mine, but it'll draw upon both "RELATIONSHIP WITH MOTHER," and "NEW V. FULL MOON," though it'll probably concentrate on something else.

This system feels like it's working, and my manuscript is improving before my eyes- pretty damn cool :)