Editing Journal Tour

Hey y'all! I'm finally back! For starters, I apologize for the unexpected hiatus last week. Life hit me like a bus and I was having a hard time juggling all of the little details. But, the good news is I'm back and somehow survived! Yay me. Anyway, back to the scheduled post of the day!

As most of you know, I've spent the last year working on edits for The Dawn of a Hero. Just like all other writers I know, I had to keep track of tons of notes (and, believe me, I've only scratched the surface). After some trial and error (mostly error) I've sort of come up with a way to keep track of them by creating an editing bullet journal. I know a lot of people do bullet journal tours, so I thought I might do a tour of my editing journal now that I'm about to enter round four of edits. I blurred out some of the details to prevent spoilers.

For starters, we have the index page. Brillant me didn't think to add one at the beginning of the notebook, but things got super mixed up and messy, so I made one out of sheer necessity. There's nothing fancy about it. Just your simple table of contents. Also, say farewell to the last decent picture in this entire tour. The rest kind of stink because the lighting isn't great right now.

Then I have a list of notes that I made for my previous round of edits. Things to add and change. This was before I realized I was making a bullet journal, so everything is in pencil. How boring is that?

Here is where we get into the fun stuff. I still had no idea what I was doing, but I was at least using color. I'm working on getting pages like this for each of my characters since that's what I'm going to focus on during this round. I used different colors for each different aspect I was exploring.

As you can see, this page was made back when her name was still you-know-what because twelve-year-old me was soooooo smart. Moving on now.

Then we have specific details about character interactions. Again, brilliant me didn't know what I was doing and what this page would become, so the next part of this is, like, ten pages away. Let's just give this smart person a round of applause, shall we? Also, the title is not accurate in the least, so just ignore it.

Then we have more stuff that had to change in the third draft. In case you're new here, I'll give you a little background. The Dawn of a Hero was my first ever 'novel'. I wrote it when I was twelve. If you don't already see where this is going, know that it was 18k words long. And I was twelve. I then rewrote it when I was about 18-ish. It was still horrible, but hey! At least it was 72k words long! We're getting somewhere. But obviously, when I went to start on edits, I had A LOT to change. Hence all of the notes.

I still have a ton to change, so there will likely be more of these pages scattered throughout the journal.

And then we get back to character stuff. I started writing stuff down for Laylah's character arc. This goes on for a few pages, but this is the first one. I really loved this because it helped me solidify several of the points in the story where things could be strengthened a bit. This was also still when her name was still you-know-what. But whatever. It was awesome to work on this.

To help me with this, I used Sarah Letourneau's Character Evolution Files. This was a super helpful resource. She takes you through each portion of the character arc and uses several examples to show you how it works throughout the story. I highly recommend it if this is something you struggle with.

Oh, here's a fun page! A list of some of the dragons in my story! I started adding more dragons into my story because one of my characters Special Ability is dragon taming, so obviously it would make sense to actually have dragons in it. Duh, Sarah. Anyway, this list is helpful to keep them all straight. It'll probably continue to grow as I come up with more. You decide which one you think is the best.

Now here's where the magic happened. One of the struggles I had with this story was an inactive villain. After a long time of not knowing what his purpose was, I finally figured it out. It revolutionized my entire book and now he's one of the coolest characters! And this page was also back when his name was still Surucsbo. But now it's Sorrus because I can actually pronounce that. #fantasyprobs

You might not be able to tell, but I did this in dark red/burgundy. It didn't really come out in the picture.

More stuff to add and change. This was also in pencil because I was not at home and I didn't have my pretty pens with me.

We're finally getting back to character stuff. Again. 'Cause I'm organized like that. Also, appreciate the random sticky notes that I leave to myself throughout. I have a thing for sticky notes and index cards. My desk is gift wrapped in them. My notes are covered in them. My outlines have even more outlines. It's insane. My desk would probably look neat and tidy without them. But the organization of my brain comes first, so thus I'll settle for a cluttered desk.

And that's what I have so far. In the future, I will add details about the rest of my characters, though they won't be as detailed as Laylah's. And I'll have world building stuff. I'll probably add a timeline to it too because that's super important to this story. And hopefully, things will look even better in the future now that I sort of know what I'm doing. I want to add some yellow and orange pens to my collection so I have more variety. I just need to go buy them at some point.

So there you have it. A quick tour of my editing journal. What did you think? How do you keep all of your notes organized? As you can see, I could use some tips as well, so throw all of your advice at me. What works best for you?