Tag: plotting

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Evening Revelry

Today is about plotting this Benhá story.

The following aren’t necessarily full chapters or scenes. You should assume a mixture of scenes, chapters, and sub-chapter events.

  • Escape from The Song
  • Abandonment on the shores of the Benhá river
  • Eavesdropping on Brother Gane and someone more (less?) important than he. Misunderstands that Gane had some hand in the ‘firing of The Song’ and that maybe it was all an illusion.
  • Introduction of The Song
  • MC selling in her booth
  • MC meeting mysterious old man(Gane)
  • Discovering the body
  • Meeting the live victim?
  • Surprise revealing of the condition of the victim
  • Evening revelry in the entertainment quarter of The Song
  • Mayor trying to sway Gane against MC
  • MC traveling alone to monastery
  • Gane casting a shielding spell over MC
  • The shield spell wearing off en route to the monastery
  • Running away from the monastery
  • Returning to the burnt out ruins of The Song
  • Meeting other ‘magician/monks’ at the monastery
  • Skin writing training
  • Some illuminating scene why SW is valuable (help)
  • Discovering the truth about mom and dad. They were hiding out in The Song.
  • PP1: Murder of a new friend at the monastery; (can’t exactly do murder a third time can I?)
  • PP2: Remote blastings finally hit MC directly when she gets to the gutted The Song; she’s nearly killed
  • MC trying to use SW as a weapon; linked to PP1?

233 words on day 505

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A Monstrous Gear

Yesterday I said I’d write two disembodied dialogues, but I only wrote one since it got rather involved. I couldn’t remember the second series I’d planned yesterday yesterday. I can’t remember it today. That sucks. I was hoping to inject a little personality into my main character and I feel certain that dialogue was key to a scene.

Oh well. I’ll mark that up to my subconscious editor cleaning house.

I think the best I can do is make a bit of a scene listing here:

  • Introduce MC
  • MC discovers skin writing
  • MC explores SW
  • MC consults with ‘medical personnel’
  • MC is discovered
  • Murdered fisherman is discovered
  • MC is linked to dead fisherman
  • Mayor is introduced
  • Brother Gaine arrives
  • Jury is summoned
  • MC is convicted/denounced/shunned
  • MC and Gaine escape fire
  • Gaine takes MC to [monastery/school]
  • MC meets fellow SWrs
  • MC finds acceptance with fellow SWrs
  • MC overhears Gaine speaking suspiciously about the fire/circumstances
  • MC abandons [monastery/school]
  • MC returns to Song to find out what happened during the fire

>pop<

Now I recall the conversation. It wasn’t long at all.

“You’ve been playing God with my life,” MC said. She wished she could drop dead that moment so those could be her last words. MC expected a slap or a denial or a retort. Gaine sighed. Before he turned his back on her his head dipped slightly. She interpreted the movement as shame, but hardly believed it so.

“Yes. And I’ve played God with many other lives over the sprawl of my life. Doing so is my curse.”

Her mind thought, “Fah!” but her lips never parted to interject.

“Most of those lives lesser than your own. Maybe a handful greater.”

Her anger croaked out: “Who else?”

“Mine for one.”

She was glad he still faced the window or she never would have loosened her throat to ask, “And how does that life, your life, measure against those others? How does it measure against mine?”

He turned like a monstrous gear in a huge machine. His arms crossed during the motion and his eyes met hers. He held that contact until she had no other choice but to simply vacate his room.

366 words on day 499

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Rub Some Dirt on It

Nora Jones is gonna be sinking soon on the radio.

I’ve been working on writing, but not writing these past several days. Yesterday I penned something with pen and paper. In the past when I’ve done that I’ve also promised to scan and post those here. Don’t bother looking I only fullfilled that promise once. I’ll not bother now.

What have been up to? I cranked out a beatsheet template in SuperNotecard that goes a long way to illuminating the structure of a story. I also added helpful notes to it that I hope will aid me in following and then understanding that structure better. These notes are paraphrased from Larry Brooks’ storyfix.com site. A site that follows through on it’s pledge to teach story structure. Something I missed out on when I took the novel writing class at Lighthouse in Denver.

I’m getting better at reading like a writer as well. Starting to see how book chapters are more than good places to stop reading and turn out the lights. I now get more of a sense from them that the author scrawled a line across a notecard or a sheet of paper or a monitor like “And then I need the MC to…” As if there were a plan. And then wrote it so well that it only seemed the MC was a living breathing choosing thing clearing her path in a true world.

I feel like I’m getting better seeing the point of conflict in a story. That sounds as dumb to me as I’m sure it reads to you. Let me try it this way: I’m starting to realize that facing conflict is what I enjoy about a character. What makes me like them more. I think as an author I want to coddle my characters. Like I literally don’t want to be too mean to them because I don’t want them harmed.

In this latest story idea I need done by Saturday night I’ve got murder rolling around in my head. I’ve not written it out because I just don’t want to inflict that level of conflict on my character, but I’ve also not let go of the thought. So far I’ve kept that incident at bay with the justification that murder might be a bit extreme for this short a story, but it nags at me: if this were the real world someone could die. Someone could kill. Someone could deflect the blame. Someone could take it. It complains that I’m being a pussy.

“Rub some dirt on it and hike on camper.”

434 words on day 497