The Dance: Scrapple

Scrapple: not really the dance of love.

I'm writing tonight about the first dance we all take with a new work. We have to tell ourselves the story. Sometimes, one talks to writers who start with only the barest of stories (she walks into he club and see's her Beau with her sister and then it all goes to Hell). Sometimes, one talks to fellow with six or seven legal pads of detailed outline.

Both work.

We must first tell ourselves the story before we can be comfortable with the first draft process.

Scrapple is a new mind-mapping software from the Scriviner people for doing just this sort of early work. It lets us tie all those odd little details into a digital format that works well enough as a roadmap of what might happen in the first draft.

Scrapple is available here.

I'm trying it now. I haven't had enough to say it is the magic in a bottle some of us need. I can say it is a lot easier than the 9000 index cards I seem to accumulate in the first pass. YMMV.

SO, in the dance there are steps and twists and turns and dips. In my first pass I have the same.

Scrapple seems to be something that can help. Seems.

It's wort a try. You might give it a shot too (unless you are a complete pantser for whom any organization at all is death....skip it in that case).

First positions everyone. We're going to try a little Cha-Cha next. [ Mind the dead bodies. ]