Story Maps

As I'm gearing up to release Chapter 4 of my Harry Potter fanfic and finding that my plot needed some restructuring, I thought I'd share some of J. K. Rowling's own plot maps.  This first one is allegedly from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

I am absolutely amazed and humbled.  I mean, look at the level of detail here!  She organizes by chapter number, the date an event takes place, the chapter title, major plot points (we call these "set-pieces" in writing), how the prophecy relates to each bit, and then characters and their interactions and relationships.  This is so cool!  My plotting is not nearly as intensive as this, although for my own personal full-length work, I hope to achieve an outline like this (also outlines are tools - obviously she didn't follow this perfectly {I think I spot some discrepancies} but she did use it to guide her to keep her on track with all her subplots and weaving of relationships and the setting up and resolution of each scene and set-piece, as I hope to do with my own work).

I also just read Rowling's 2012 novel The Casual Vacancy which was very riveting, with extremely rich characters, and a plot that was almost too real, too close to home for my liking but I liked it because of that, too.  I couldn't put it down, I read it in three days after borrowing it from my local library (it's also being adapted into a TV mini series; the first episode just premiered in the UK on the BBC on the 16th of this month!  It comes to the US on April 29th, partnered with HBO).  I was fascinated by the "braiding" in the novel - the characters were intricately woven together and it was amazing to watch the separate strands come together to form something "solid".  I found a handy little chart depicting those interactions:

Complex, yes?  But important for solid writing!  

Circling back around to Harry Potter, I also found a good fan-made Black Family Tree:

Also neat, character-relationship wise.  

(And, yes, before you ask, I am quite familiar with Tolkien's level of family trees!  No need to go into them here, though!)

All in all, story mapping is obviously very useful in both the pre-work and to explain a work after-the-fact.  I only hope to have this much attention to detail in my own works, both fan-made and from my heart and head!