I'm in a love/hate relationship with plot mapping. Now I realize that might not be the technical term for it, but that's what I call it for lack of something better.

Plot mapping is when you write out the points you want to hit in your novel. For instance, if I want to make sure that certain characters fall in love, I put that in the plot map along with the journey they have towards falling in love. If my hero is going to fight the villain three times, those scenes are in the plot map. You get my point right?

I have written books with a plot map (Prophecy, Forbidden, Legacy, the third version of Awakening) and I've written one without it (the first in the spinoff series) and I really hate plot mapping. After writing without it, I thought I didn't need it to do it anymore. I was so wrong.

Now that I have to rewrite the first novel in the spinoff series, I wish I had a plot map. I wish I had something to guide me in putting characters in the right places without leaving something out. I'm on page seventeen and I know I'm doing stuff that didn't happen until page twenty before. What's missing in those three pages? It's driving me crazy.

The moral of this post is this: just because you can doesn't mean you should (thank you Acheron). I will never again write without doing the tedious plot map, even if I hate it and just want to get going already. Thank goodness I have the plot map for Awakening saved after my computer fiasco last week. After writing that twice, I really feel better looking at a third rewrite with some kind of guidance.