Strix Metrics 01

Holy Toledo, I'm ahead of schedule. Only for four days, but it has been so long since I was ahead of schedule on anything, I'm going to bask in it for a while.

Basking done. What am I doing and what have I accomplished? I took Todd Stone's "12-Week Novelist Boot Camp" plan out of Novelist's Boot Camp, and plugged it into my calender--only giving myself two weeks to complete each week. I just finished all the exercises for the first week. (And thanks for the earlier comment, Todd. :D)

Now the first week's work is on getting your mind set to write and focused brainstorming. So I'm not claiming to be a writing wiz with my progress, I've done a lot of brainstorming on this universe. And using the Big Rocks and daily MITs has helped me focus my energy on what needs to be done. This progress visible despite taking the weekend off and needing two days to recover from that.

So what do I have accomplished storywise?

• Comprehensive Concept
• Cast List
• Setting Notes

There are still plenty of background holes--a couple of character need names, for example--but there's enough down to get me started on the next section.

It takes a little of the happy buzz off to realize I have to be told what to do and when with writing. It's nothing I have never done before, so it's not learning new tricks. More like rewiring my brain to do this again, which still makes me ask "what the frell?" to myself. I don't know why my brain needs rewiring, but since I'm getting results, it must need rewiring. *Shrugs* Like I said, it's working so I'm not questioning much.

Comprehensive Concept: I know I have used this technique before though I'm fairly sure I used a whole paragraph. But shrinking it down to a sentence covering four essentials of the story is brilliant.

Strix: : In this paranormal suspense (genre), a vampire (main character) disguises himself as a superhero and then must protect a human woman (main character) from the murderers (opposition) trying to frame him for their killings in the upper classes of Haganville (macro setting).

Cast List: This was a great exercise, thinking about your inspirations, setting, and genre then listing the people you would run into. Normally, I just get a hold of the core cast and let them rip, and make up new people when the story reaches them. But this list creation and then picking opposites have inspired some dramatic scenes in my head at least. I'm not sure if those scenes will make the final cut, but they are new possibilities.

Setting Notes: These usually end up wrote all over the place. My notes on Zy's novel... *shudder* I love having them in one self-contained spot to add more to if I think of it.