Heat-Mapping Your Book

If you’re like me, you pants your way through writing a book. 

I start my novels with rough bullet points that outline the main “and then”s, and fill in the gaps on my next run through. It’s a very rough and quick process, mostly because I am impatient and want to start writing. 

After I’ve finished, it’s time to sit back and work out whether or not I have a book, or a pile of nonsensical scenes with a weak, inconsequential thread. 

While it’s not absolutely necessary, I find it important that throughout the narrative, events ramp up to the final, concluding, dramatic event. I also like to make sure my character/s go on a well rounded journey. While I am thinking of these things throughout the writing process, some exercises help to ensure all pressure points have been hit. 

For this reason, I always retrospectively apply certain frameworks to help gain some outside perspective on what I’ve written. I call this “heat mapping”. I use a colour system to highlight key chapters; green, yellow, amber and red. Preferably these should appear in order. 

This is particularly useful if your book doesn’t follow the classic “hero’s journey” format. It is also useful if your book follows multiple characters. I always want each of my characters to have a reasonably well rounded story arc, so it’s useful to lay the characters side by side to see if the “amber” phases align.

Some of the events overlap. After all, it’s likely the characters stories intertwine, but their personal battles and wins are also mapped as distinct. With this method, you can ensure that a key chapter for Z is told from Z’s perspective, rather than the events being narrated by Y or X. It’s Z’s story, X and Y have their own moments. 

I do this in a table, but it can also be applied to a chapter list:

This isn’t a complicated concept. I don’t remember reading it anywhere, it just made sense to do after I finished draft 1 of my first novel. At that point I was so “in it” that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. The process helped me to feel confidence in what I had done. There was substance in the madness. There was sense in the complexity. I had written a book.