#a terror inducing look at the dichotomy that lives in my brain

[mego42]

Tell me all about the Buffyverse one I need it!!

aha ahahaha ahahahahahahahahahaha 

the buffyverse aka what is shaping up to be my white whale so far only exists in the planning stages. 

these are going under the cut bc they are, um. intense. I am afraid of myself.

buffyverse thoughts - google doc where i dump everything as it occurs to me, usually typing on my phone, often half-awake, sometimes drunk, debatably coherent but functions well enough as a place for me to see things i thought and be like huh okay that makes no sense but what if. lots of like, 7 level bullet lists. honestly scares me a little. 

buffyverse pacing - this is a google sheet that author twitter was passing around ages ago back when I still used my twitter account and unfortunately I cannot for the life of me remember where it came from BUT it’s a really neat sheet with some formula stuff built in to help chart pacing. I use it mostly for tracking what I call tent pole beats (basically what plot and character arcs should be hitting to have a cohesive act structure), the word count is just in there for funsies, I doubt I will pay it any mind.

as you can see, I am still figuring this out and tbh am probably going to change a bunch of the stuff I have bc the beginning is solid but then it gets murky. this is truly terrifying. I have never done this level of pacing planning for fic before, I’ve only used it for novel stuff. WHITE WHALE!!!!

buffyverse storyboard - this is an google sheet format I shamelessly stole from @pynkhues after she posted about her process once bc she is a gift and i am a bridge troll who mooches off of other people’s good sense. or something. (I DIDNT SLEEP MUCH LAST NIGHT IM IN A WEIRD PLACE). idk if I’m using it the same way she is but here’s how I've been using it for the last few chapters of song and dean pov:

first tab is the overview tab with all of the chapters as rows and high-level breakdowns of each scene by column. i’m trying to keep these really simple and call out any major like, seeds basically in different colors so I have a visual map of where things are planted and where they’re bearing fruit. 

after that, each chapter gets its own tab where I work out what happens in more detail, what the causality chain is, what the emotional beats are, what (if any) themes get worked in and any reminders to myself (usually some variation of DON’T FORGET X, Y, AND Z YOU SILLY BITCH)

honestly, it’s a lot of going over the same stuff from different angles and I’ve found it to be INCREDIBLY helpful for clarifying beats and arcs and all of that, especially for song where I have a lot I’m keeping track of at this point. I am v v grateful sophie shared with the class.

buffyverse character sheet - this one is something new I’m trying, this time shamelessly stolen from a recent post @foxmagpie did about her planning process for delinquents that blew me away and also struck me as incredibly handy. I’ve adapted her version a little to add some more columns bc my adhd makes it really hard to hold this much information in my head and having a quick visual reference of it all together is extremely helpful. I still need to start bringing over notes from my notes doc and plugging them in here 

so yeah. basically, I am a crazy person and this project is horrifying in scope and I’m already like eh should I bother but also WHITE WHALE!!!! so we’ll see what happens.

my wip folder is a mess and a mystery to me as much as you but ask me about any that strike your fancy anyway