Tuesday, March 20, 2012

2012 Project Post 04

Usually, I have a much firmer grasp of what the story is after the first draft is written. Especially since I’m a plotter and don’t even start the first draft until I know the main plot line frontward and backward. The problem with Forget the Sun is I tried to expand it into a novel for each of the four main-ish characters, but I didn’t really expand their stories. Hence yelling at myself in the notes of the read-through chart for the worse scene of all 144 of them, two lines of dialogue without even attribution tags to describe who was speaking. So now I have to shrink the storylines down to subplots and make sure they support the main plot and the theme, and shift the whole thing to the new Strix universe and the ideas I had for that.

Just so there is no confusion, I’m well aware this is now a total rewrite.

What I don’t like in the current manuscript is a short list: Robert’s suicide, it doesn’t make sense where it is and feels like it’s just tacked on to get rid of the character. The family dynamics haven’t developed organically from the background I’ve set up. Anne Rice and Joss Whedon stole covered watcher organizations and I don’t have anything new to add.

Characters: I found a few to drop out of the background, a chunk will get name changes, and a few to add. It feels weird with everyone else in the Project discussing how they’re reducing the text and I’m talking about adding. Then I have to remind myself “three keeper scenes out of 144.” That said and minus a little fine-tuning they all need, the cast will transfer to the second draft.

Plot: The main plot has always been a coming of age story for Peg, in which she inherits her father’s superhero mantle and comes to terms with her dhampir nature. Her grandmother’s diary entries were intended to be the explanation for her dhampir nature, but that’s not what I wrote (what the hell was I thinking!). She also finds herself attracted to two young men, Alexander Bittan and David Roger.

Alexander is the antagonist right now, goaded into it by Deats, the man who raised him. His arc or subplot has him denying his dhampir nature and dying to preserve family traditions.

David is a rookie cop who thinks his only connection to the vigilante vampire world is through his profession. Then he and his little sister investigate and find the secret their overprotective mother has kept for years.

Then there’s Robert, who can’t relate to his daughter and kills himself rather than learning how. What the hell is wrong with you! Are you trying to win awful father of the year award?

What’s left is Sally’s career with the Watchers, which is going bye-bye, and how all the characters can play the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game with how they are related to each other.

What I’ve got isn’t bad—it’s badly written but that’s a different issue. But it’s got no kick to make me want to write it. Now I can write without the kick, but why make things harder for myself? And Robert needs something to do in the story. Introducing Gil Sagara, Ferris Smith, and Raven Griffen adds that kick.

So now I need a comprehensive concept. It’s related to the throughline that Chuck Wendig defines, but I ran across the comprehensive concept first. Plus the comprehensive concept ends up being a nice summary tag to tease readers with, so I don’t gnash my teeth over that requirement at FanFiction.net now. I’ll probably come back to the throughline with subplot issues, but for now I want to concentrate on genre, opposition, main character, macro setting, and conflict. Conflict is my addition, to help structure the sentence and match it to what the story is about.

Genre: paranormal suspense
Opposition: Gil Sagara
Main character: Peg Ver Hagan
Macro setting: Haganville
Conflict: control of the city

Comprehensive Concept: Haganville is the prize sought by a centuries-old vampire and only an untested dhampir filling her father’s role as protector opposes him in this paranormal suspense.

Now that I have all these elements swirling in my head, it’s time to ask questions and fill out the beat sheet. I’ve tried the scenes on note cards before (when I made this novel into a hypertext story actually), but I’ve never had a plot yet that required me shoving scenes around. So I detail out a beat sheet to put everything in order.

The beat sheet concept I got from Larry Brooks, which helps you build in the storytelling structure. I also throw in details I learned from the Master Story Summary. In hindsight, I probably should have thought of the read-through chart as the master story summary. I might have gotten through it quicker in that format.

That’s all for this post. The next post I should have the beat sheet done and post character cast list.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Stellar Gift of Death Post 173

Stellar Gift of Death 2011 Revision

Progress Bar from Writertopia

METRICS
New Words: 415
Chapter Nineteen total words: 2160
Total words for the new draft: 83,490
What I hate: That I keep telling myself I’ll work when I get home and I NEVER do.
The Good: I actually got the characters up to Tonork’s home after an hour of writing.
The Bad: An hour of writing did not make up all the writing I missed this week.
Fave line: “And since the murderer’s modus operendi hadn’t worked and there’s no way to kill a Shifter, we thought he’d leave Tonork alone. And now he’s dead.”
What I'm looking forward to: Going to bed early.
What I'm not looking forward to: Using the stop watch while writing on the paying job to see just how much time I’m giving to writing.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

2012 Project Post 03

I FINALLY FINISHED THE READ THROUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t want to talk about how many nights I skipped over the editing time that I should have been putting in, which is why I didn’t finish the first read-through until St. Patrick’s Day. It’s finish, it’s done, now I have to take the information and decide what I’m going to do with it.

Project 2012: What to do with draft number two
At this stage, if you are following along, you will have completed the read through of your first draft and removed those scenes that don’t add to the narrative. You will have saved the surviving scenes into a new document. This is draft two, and this is where we start to do a lot of structural work. So open your spreadsheet, grab some notepaper and lets get to work.
Save the surviving scenes into a new document. What surviving scenes? Now that I’ve finished laughing hysterically, it’s not that bad. I did have scenes that made me go “wow that has a kick.” Three of them in fact. Out of 144. *Headdesk*

Going back through the spreadsheet to find those three just depressed the hell out of me. For my editing time tomorrow I will figure out what I’m turning this into, right now I need to leave this text for a while.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Stellar Gift of Death Post 172

Stellar Gift of Death 2011 Revision

Progress Bar from Writertopia

METRICS
New Words: 122
Chapter Nineteen total words: 2160
Total words for the new draft: 83,075
What I hate: That I keep telling myself I’ll work when I get home and I NEVER do.
The Good: Some words are better than no words.
The Bad: I really need to get into a writing gear above “slow and steady.”
Fave line: “Certain enough to investigate his death in person. And why didn’t you ever warn me that nobody would let me see a dead Shifter?”
What I'm looking forward to: Finishing these scene and going to bed early.
What I'm not looking forward to: Playing catch up this weekend.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Stellar Gift of Death Post 171

Stellar Gift of Death 2011 Revision

Progress Bar from Writertopia

METRICS
New Words: 285
Chapter Nineteen total words: 2160
Total words for the new draft: 82,953
What I hate: Firefox deciding to fuck with me today. I’m not rebooting again.
The Good: After what seemed like forever, I’m finally working again.
The Bad: My work everyday goal isn’t working.
Fave line: “They often deputize me. Saves them the trouble of training someone else, I think. But what are you doing here?”
What I'm looking forward to: Finishing these scene and going to bed early.
What I'm not looking forward to: All day without working Firefox.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Stellar Gift of Death Post 170

Stellar Gift of Death 2011 Revision

Progress Bar from Writertopia

METRICS
New Words: 265
Chapter Nineteen total words: 2160
Total words for the new draft: 82,668
What I hate: Not being able to sleep straight through the night.
The Good: Words in a coherent order!
The Bad: I hand wrote a little during my vacation, but that was expected. I got back to the paying job February 28th to a March 1st deadline for the Tax and Company Licensing divisions. February 29th, still rushed and I woke up with a stuffed up nose and got nothing written around all my appointments. That night I kept waking up every hour sweaty, but achy and chilled and burrowing under all my blankets. March 1st, I dragged my ass to the paying job still feeling achy and chilled but we had a deadline. I bought a thermometer when I finally got off the paying job and turns out I was running a fever. I stayed home March 2nd and the fever finally broke that day. I spent the rest of the weekend recuperating. Today’s the first day I had any energy to focus on writing.
Fave line: “The Blob government has treaties out with all the systems that matter. If a Blob dies out of Blob territory, we non-Blobs leave it alone until a representative of the Blob government arrives. And that is not you.”
What I'm looking forward to: Breathing through my nose again and talking at my normal octave.
What I'm not looking forward to: Re-establishing my routine so I can make steady progress.