Cave of Rainbows

As much as we tout the benefits of our rainbow-based approach to story development, we must also admit that the system has its drawbacks. Laying the whole thing out takes up a hallway, or most of a room. Laying out multiple rainbows concurrently (backstory + sequel + another sequel) takes up our entire auxiliary writing cave.

Studying the whole thing is a bit laborious, too. It can involve some stooping, and playing a sort of anti-Twister to keep from ruining the layout with one’s feet. (The other night, Kent had to sneeze while standing astride the whole construct. That could have been disastrous!)

Maybe we kid ourselves, but we feel like the inconveniences are all offset by the system’s merits. In fact, the strengths and weaknesses are all due to the same thing — the physical nature of the cards, which allows them to be shifted around and makes their representation of the story more tangible and spatial. There are software tools that do similar things, some of which we also make use of. Scrivener’s cork board is nice, and Jen is an expert with Aeon Timeline.

But sometimes you need to crawl around in your dusty auxiliary writing cave, and sneeze a few times, to really internalize a project.