you'll have a concise version of your entire novel that you can use to plan your next draft. You'll have a holistic view of the whole entire plot in just a few pages, which makes it way easier to see plot arcs and spot plot holes. And the time that you spend examining each scene and thinking of how to convince it into just a few words. We'll help you see how each scene contributes to the story as a whole. Or whether there are scenes that are not serving your novel.
Well, welcome to your next draft this week. I'm back with the third installment in our series on scene lists. My favorite developmental editing tool. Now I'm not going to do a long introduction on seamless here. Because I've already done several episodes, exploring a lot of different elements about seeing lists. So you'll just have to trust me if this is your first episode, that seamless or super helpful, but I will give you a quick recap of what we covered in those previous episodes.
So that after this one, you can go back and go here, all those elements as well. In the first episode I covered the why. Why create a seamless. What will you use it for? Why does it make your editing life easier? Then in the second episode, I covered the, where, where will you make your scene list? I talked about the pros and cons of creating your seamless in a document versus a spreadsheet.
And I shared templates for both formats so that you can easily create your seamless document or your seamless spreadsheet. You can get those templates at our so.com/list. This week, I'm talking about the, how. How do you create your seamless, what information should you include? How long should it be when in your writing and editing process, should you make it. That's what I'll be covering here. I'll share three different ways to condense your novel into a seamless plus.
The ways I recommend that you use each one. And by the end of the episode, you'll be ready to pull up your manuscript, open those seamless templates and create a seamless of your very own. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes in the series, I recommend queuing them up in your podcast player to listen to you after this one. You can find them@alicesideload.com slash 29. And our sobo.com/thirty. Now I have a lot to cover. This episode is a long and meeting one.
So I'm going to skip any more preamble and just jump right in. Let's get to it. Now, like I said, I'm going to share three ways to create a seamless. There's no right or wrong here. And I use all three of these approaches at different times. I'll share each one and give you the pros and cons of each. And keep in mind, these aren't even all the ways that you could create a seamless. This tool is infinitely customizable.
So take a listen to these three approaches and then use them as inspiration to create the system that works for you. First step. Describe each scene in as few words as possible. What you'll do here is read a scene, then write just a super short description of what happens. Kelly goes to the store. Henry is expelled. The cat gets stuck in a tree, but it does get a bird. This isn't a long thoughtful explanation of what's happening or why it matters.
It's just a really quick note, remind you of what happens in the scene. You can track this in a document or in a spreadsheet. Both work well for this. Personally, this is the strategy that I use when I'm reading a manuscript for the first time and doing an initial manuscript evaluation. My goal at that point is to get the scope of the story as a whole into my head. And this is a quick note taking strategy that allows me to condense the whole book into a really brief outline.
Pros of this approach. It's quick and easy and it doesn't require deep thought. And this is a huge pro. So much of developmental editing is intensive, deep thought work. And this is a totally legitimate way of creating a seamless that also gives your brain a bit of a break. Also it's short and easy to reference. This is the briefest most concise version of a seamless of the three that I'm going to share.
Which means that you can condense a whole story onto just three or four or five sheets of paper, and then remind yourself what happens when at a glance. But of course there's a con to keep in mind too. So let's talk about it. Super short descriptions. Don't provide enough context for people besides you to understand them. This is a great tool for personal use. But if you create a seamless in as few words as possible, and then you send it to me.
I probably won't have enough details to understand the whole story. Short notes, work best for the person who wrote them because you know what they mean to you. But if you want to create a seamless that you can share with other people for feedback. One of the next two approaches is more useful. Which brings me to the second way to make a seamless. Describe each scene in one sentence that encapsulates the purpose of the scene.
In this seamless, your scene descriptions are a little bit longer, a full sentence, or sometimes even two sentences. Now. I could stop right there. Describe each scene in one to two sentences is a great way to make a scene list. The step that I'm going to share next, we'll make those sentences a little more complicated to create it asks for a little more work and brainpower as you craft them.
But if you keep the following things in mind, These sentences will be remarkably useful summaries of your scenes. When I'm creating a seamless, like this, I aim to include specific information in each one sentence summary. I analyze each scene to identify three things. One. What literally happens in the scene. In other words, what's the external action happening in the scene. What are the characters doing? Too. What choice does the protagonist make?
In every scene, I'm looking for the moment when the protagonist makes a decision and what that decision is. And three. What's the value shifts in the scene. What changes. This is a really important question, but it also takes some practice to start noticing value shifts in scenes. So for more on value shifts, I recommend checking out episode 27 of your next draft value shifts, how to craft compelling change in every story. Go to Alice Dot com slash 27 or find the link in the show notes.
In other words, I'm analyzing each scene to see what literally happens in the scene. And what the scene is really about why it matters to the characters and the story as a whole. Here's an example of what that looks like. This is a scene from the seamless site created for looking for Alaska by John Green. Kevin. His hair dyed blue from Laura's work at bar night. Asks for a truce, but the kernel born sin that the prank isn't over yet. So talk of a truce. We'll have to wait.
Now, you don't know who the characters are from this one sentence, because I picked a sentence about a third of the way through the book. But what you do know from the sentence is that there's been a prank that resulted in Kevin's hair being dyed blue. He's now asking for a truce and the Colonel the best friend of the protagonist in the story refuses the truce. Which means the prank rivalry continues. What literally happens in the scene.
Kevin comes to the Colonel and they engage in negotiations about the prank war and a possible truce. What choice does the protagonists make for the scene? We'll consider the Colonel the protagonists. And he decides not to accept the truce. What's the value shift? What changes. Truce offered. To truce rejected. At the start of the scene, a truth is on the table. And at the end of the scene, it's been rejected. No truce. And all of that is summed up in that one sentence.
I'll share that sentence again so you can hear how it comes together. Kevin. His hair dyed blue from Laura's work at bar night. Asks for a truce, but the Colonel warns him that the prank isn't over yet. So talk of a truce. We'll have to wait. If I were to write this in as few words as possible, back in that first version of a scene list where the goal is to take quick and easy notes, I would write. Kevin asks for a truce. So you can see the different level of detail here.
The short version is a really quick note, just meant to jog my memory about the scene. And because I wrote it, I know what I'm talking about. The longer sentence. It gives more context about what's going on. It includes the change that happens in the scene. And it gives me enough information to connect this to the larger story. I understand how the scene is moving the story forward. The Colonel's pranks on Kevin, which had been part of an ongoing prank war throughout the novel.
Have warned Kevin down enough that he's asking for a truce. But the pranks aren't over yet. So peace is denied. When you have a full seamless like this, you can hand it over to someone who knows nothing about your novel. And if they read it from top to bottom, they'll understand the whole entire story. It's kind of remarkable. Now I want to pause here and say, do not get stuck in perfectionism here. When you make this kind of scene list, describe each scene in one to two sentences.
As you write those sentences, think about what's literally happening. What choice the protagonist makes and what changes in the scene? But do not let yourself get stalled for ages here, trying to write the perfect sentences. This isn't about being perfect. No part of editing is about being perfect. This is simply a tool that you can use to make your editing life easier. If it's making things harder rather than easier, find a way to modify.
If you're a little stumped on the literal action, the protagonist choice and the thing that changes that's okay. Just write two or even three sentences about what you do know. That way you're defaulting to adding extra context. And if you were to hand your scene list off to me, I would be able to use that extra context to help you identify why the scene matters to your story. So that's my big caveat. I don't wet. This process gets you stuck. It's meant to help you not frees you up.
This type of seamless one where each scene is summarized in one to two thoughtful sentences is a really robust, seamless, and yet also still concise. It works well in both document and spreadsheet formats. Personally, I find it a little easier to use this in spreadsheet format. Because I have separate columns for all that information that I analyzed to inform this sentence. I have a column for what's literally happening in the scene.
A column for what choice the protagonist makes and a column for the value shift. So once I fill out those columns, I then use that information to combine them all into one sentence. But you don't have to use a spreadsheet for this. You can definitely write a list like this in a document too. If that's more comfortable for you. Now pros and cons because we've got some big pros and some big cons here. Pro's first. It's robust yet concise with just the right amount of detail.
These sentences are rich with context while still being very short, my full scene list for looking for Alaska is about 2,600 words. And you can get the gist of the whole entire novel just by reading those sentences. There's enough information here that you could pass the seamless off to someone else. And they'd be able to understand the story and give you thoughtful feedback. And the second pro here is that this level of analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of all your scenes.
This type of seamless forces you to reckon with the purpose of every single scene. And what each one contributes to your story as a whole. That's really illuminating work. For some scenes, the purpose will be clear immediately. For a lot of scenes, you'll have to work to find it, which shows you opportunities to revise and make it more clear. And you might find that some scenes don't have a purpose, you can find it all, which is a clue that you might need to heavily revise or cut them.
Plus the analysis you do in order to condense a scene into a single sentence will show you what precisely isn't clear in the scene. Is there no external action. Does your protagonists not make a choice? Is there no value shift? No change. All of these are major clues about specific opportunities for revision. So with all those pros in mind, why wouldn't you choose to make a seamless, like this? Well, there's one major con. Creating, this type of seamless is hard.
It takes practice and it takes a lot of time. As you might imagine an approach to creating a seamless that requires you to first analyze the scene, then condense the information you find into a specific format isn't quick or easy. It took me a good bit of practice to learn, to find this information within scenes. And then more practice to write it all into a single sentence. And you can get stuck in analysis here, trying to get your seamless. Perfect.
Like a teacher is going to come behind you and mark you off for writing down the wrong symbols in the great Gatsby or something. Don't get stuck here. Remember a few principles. First. Your seamless is a tool. It is not the manuscript itself. You are not going to publish your seamless or aim to turn your seen list into a New York times. Best seller. It is simply a tool and its purpose is to help you. Also your seamless is a living document.
You can always come back and revise your seamless later. In fact, your goal later on will be to revise your seamless, to treat it as the sandbox where you play and imagine what you can create in your story. This is not set in stone or permanent in any way. And finally keep in mind that the goal here is to condense your story into a short, informative list. If you can turn each scene into a sentence or two. And if someone else could read that sentence or two and understand what's going on.
That's it you've done it. You've accomplished the goal. Okay. Kick the perfectionism right out. Do not get stuck here. Just turn each scene into a sentence or two and do your best to capture in that sentence. The reason why the scene matters to your story. And if this whole method of describing each scene in a single sentence, sounds prohibitively challenging to you. Don't worry. We've got one more strategy coming. Strategy number three. Describe each scene in a short paragraph.
In this seamless, you're going to summarize each scene in a short paragraph. That might be 50 words for a shorter scene or 300 words for a longer scene. Because the summary is so much longer than the single sentence. You have a lot of flexibility to include whatever you like. Describe what you think is important. The events that happen, the things that change the time that passes. The revelations that are discovered, et cetera. This seamless is the longest of all three types that I've shared.
The first kind of seamless might be just three or four pages long. The second kind will be a bit longer, but not too much. This seamless though. It could be 10 or 15 or even 20 pages long. And when you hand this seamless. Really more like seen summaries to someone who knows nothing about your novel. They'll be able to dive in and read the whole story and understand exactly what you intend to create. This seamless works best in document form.
Paragraphs are easier to read and process in a document than in a spreadsheet. And I'd even skipped the bullet points for this kind of seamless. Just make a new paragraph for every scene. Now for some pros and cons the pros. This seamless is easy. Uh, or at least easier to create. You have a full paragraph to summarize every scene and add all the details that you feel are important. It's always a challenge to condense a novel into a smaller form.
But condensing a scene into a paragraph is easier than convincing a scene into a sentence. Second. It's easy for others to understand your story just by reading this seamless. Even a paragraph of just 50 words, includes a lot of detail about what happens in a scene and what you consider important to your story. And when you hand it to someone else, they can get a really full picture of your novel. In fact, I work with a writer who starts every novel by sending me this kind of seamless.
We do really intensive structural edits on just the seamless, without me ever seeing a full draft. And then she takes that seamless and she uses it to write her next draft. It's a really powerful editing tool and a very accessible way to share your story with others in a condensed form. And the con. It's long.
This isn't the worst thing in the world, but keep in mind that your goal, when you create your scene list is to condense your entire novel, this 80,000 or a hundred thousand word document into a much shorter form. So that it's easy to see your whole story all at once. If you're seamless, it starts creeping up in word count to rival your actual novel. It's not exactly serving that purpose. It's not quicker to read or easier to review all at once.
That's not to say that a long document isn't helpful. I think that any time you challenge yourself to summarize your story in any way, You'll always gain more information about how your story is working. And what's important to you. It's just a reminder to keep your goal in mind as you create your scene list. So you don't run away with the word count. If you're trying to create a tool that's short. So there you have it three ways to create a seamless.
You can summarize every scene in as few words as possible. Summarize every scene in one or two sentences or summarize every scene in a paragraph. All of these seamless are fantastic tools. In fact, I often use multiple kinds of seen lists in tandem. Since they can serve different purposes and highlight different information. Now. Before we wrap up, I want to address one more question. When in the writing and editing process, should you create a seamless. And here's what I recommend.
Before you write your first draft, write down everything you know about your story. If you're a planner that might mean creating one of the types of seamless that I just described. You might revel in writing lengthy paragraphs for every scene describing exactly what's coming. If you're a pantser. You might not know the whole story going in. I still recommend writing down anything that you do know. If you know that somewhere around the middle of twist is coming. Write that down.
But don't worry about filling in every gap since you know that your writing process involves discovering the story along the way. After your first draft though. I recommend everyone create a seamless. If you're a planner. This might mean updating your pre-existing seamless so that it matches the book that you've actually written. If you're a pantser this means filling in all the gaps you didn't know before. Now, you know what happens, so put it all in your seamless.
This seamless will be your tool, even your guide throughout your entire developmental editing process. It's where you'll test structural changes before you make them in the actual text. Which means you'll probably update your seamless after every draft. Then plan your next draft using that new seamless. Once you finished developmental editing, you won't need your seamless anymore.
It's not really necessary for line editing or copy editing since the structure of your story will be set by the time your manuscript makes it to those stages. But if you were editing your story structure in any way, First, make sure you have a scene list on hand. All right. That was a whole, whole lot. Like I warned you at the start. This is a really long and meaty episode. And now it's your turn. In this three episode series, I've shared everything. You need to go make your own seamless.
So that's what I want you to do. Consider the three types of lists that I've described. Super brief notes about each scene to jog your memory. Uh, one to two sentence description that covers the core elements of each scene. And paragraph long summaries of each scene. Think about which one sounds most approachable for you to create? And think about why you're creating your scene list. Is it for your own reference? If so the super brief notes might be enough.
Or do you want to share it with someone else for feedback? In that case, choose the sentence or the paragraph version. Once, you know, what type of seamless you're going to create. Decide which format you'd like to use for it. Documents or spreadsheet. All three types work well in a document. If you want to use a spreadsheet, I recommend either the super brief notes one or the one to two sentence summaries. Next go to Alice settler. hello.com/list and download the seamless templates.
There's a document and a spreadsheet there. So you can take your pick. And finally create your seamless. This project will likely take you a few hours to complete. But once you do, you'll have a concise version of your entire novel that you can use to plan your next draft. You'll have a holistic view of the whole entire plot in just a few pages, which makes it way easier to see plot arcs and spot plot holes.
And the time that you spend examining each scene and thinking of how to convince it into just a few words. We'll help you see how each scene contributes to the story as a whole. Or whether there are scenes that are not serving your novel. Well, The developmental editing process can be tough. It's a challenging puzzle, trying to see the pieces of a story and figure out how they all fit together. I love anything that can make that process easier. For me. Uh, seamless does exactly that.
It's one of my favorite editing tools. One that I use with every single novel that I edit. I'm excited for you as you create your scene list and discover all the ways that it can help you through your next draft. I hope that you find as I have that it makes your life easier and your story better. Happy editing.