I am at the point that I need to work out left and right, east and west.
If I want our heroine to exit the cafe and start squinting because the sun is in her eyes, does she turn her head left or right? (To be honest, the barren way I write she just squints into the sun, but you get the idea.)
For those details I’m going through the printout with the map below and charting her every move.
It’s already pointed out that I have the train traveling the wrong way on page one.
4 responses to “Rewriting the Novel: The Map”
That is very smart to work out! I do not tend to put in the work, as a reader, to memorize those things, but every once in a while one notices something anyway, and there are people who remember directions and would notice those things immediately. (as one sometimes notices when in the third book of a series, a character’s eye color has changed without the application of colored contacts…)
KC – I think it would hit everyone subconsciously. Just a little jar that would not help.
I agree it’s good to reduce subconscious jars! (lazy skimmers who don’t care about cardinal directions might not even intake the compass points, though, to *be* subconsciously jarred. But still, one hopes one’s audience will not be entirely composed of lazy skimmers anyway.)
KC – 13 year olds? All lazy skimmers I am sure.