I’ve been trying to write this week, but after changing a bunch of “tell” to “show” in chapter 16, I just couldn’t figure out where to start next. I decided now was the time to make my chapter-by-chapter spreadsheet, as demonstrated by J. Scott Savage in his NESS chart. NESS stands for “Not Enough Story Lines,” and the idea behind this chart is to make sure there is enough going on in the book to carry the reader from one chapter to the next.

Now, my project doesn’t lack for story lines – I’ve identified more than half a dozen. What it does lack, at least at the beginning is conflict. For me, conflict is the tricky stuff I mentioned in an earlier post. I’m a peacemaker by nature, and while I know a story is nothing without conflict, it takes a concerted effort for me to inject it into my story.

So I have modified the NESS chart, making it the Conflict Intensity Checker. By outlining the main conflicts in the story, and charting the conflict intensity chapter by chapter, I have been able to confirm which chapters are the weakest. But even better than that, I can take those weak chapters and easily see which of my conflicts needs to be highlighted in this scene. It will also help me see which conflicts and story lines need to get a mention here and there to keep them in the reader’s mind.

I’ve charted about 40% of the story, and hope to have it all diagrammed by Monday, so I can start the rewrite in earnest.

Wordle is a fun little Java applet that makes pictures from the words you give it. I fed it the Christmas story I submitted to LDSPublisher’s contest last year, and this is what I got back (after a little bit of tweaking):

In the search for character names, I remembered a utility someone showed me several years ago. It’s the NameVoyager Baby Name Wizard, and it’s really quite cool. Just type in a name (or partial name) and you will see that name’s popularity by year in graphical form.

I was curious, so I typed in the names I had picked for my characters. Nearly every one showed a spike in popularity during the 60s and 70s. I had named my characters after my peers.

Unfortunately, as my second draft is set in the here-and-now, I need names that spiked in the 80s and 90s. I need to name my characters after the children of my peers.

Now, try this fun experiment. Type in the name Spencer. Notice how it’s a mildly popular name until the mid-80s, where it suddenly spikes. Now do the same thing for Ezra – this name was practically extinct until the mid-90s.

I predict a similar spike coming soon for the currently unpopular Gordon. What do you think?