What I Know So Far by Alison Henderson

I'm at that most wonderful/horrible point in the writing process--plotting and planning the first book in a new series. Possibilities abound. Yikes! Possibilities abound!! 

Who are these people, and what will they get up to? Those are the questions. My head is spinning. I've got a fun crescendo of events lined up for the first half of the book, and I know the exciting conclusion, but ugh, that third quarter. At the moment, it's a black hole. And I'd like to figure most of it out during the next two weeks because, while I don't do NaNoWriMo, I do belong to a wonderful group of supportive authors who promise to urge each other on during the month of November. Since OG and I are currently in Chicago working on PO&O's new condo AGAIN, I don't have much thinking time.

Here's what I know so far:

• The series will be set in and around Monterey County, from Big Sur to Monterey, and feature three artist sisters--a kinetic sculptor, a raku potter, and a glass blower.
• I know all the titles and the characters' names. Yay! This is critical for me. I can't seem to start a book until I've decided on these things.
• The heroine of the first book flees her controlling, and probably criminal, fiance and comes home to Big Sur. She takes a day job in an art gallery in Carmel.
• The hero of the first book is a Minnesota-farm-boy-turned-forensic-accountant for the FBI who looks like Chris Pratt. 
• The rotten fiance come to Carmel, where he is murdered by an agent of the Russian mob, who then comes after the heroine.
• The owner of the art gallery and his antique-dealer partner are mixed up in money laundering and meth dealing as a result of their gambling-related debts to the Russian mob.
• There will be a variety of minor but hilarious incidents straight from the Pine Cone police log.

Beyond all that, who knows? LOL

Alison

https://www.alisonhenderson.com

How does my garden grow? by Barbara Edwards

I realized gardening can be compared to writing when I started my end of summer clean-up this week. Clipping the old stalks, moving plants to a better location, weeding out the weeds all reminded me of the editing I must do on my current book. I have to crop out unnecessary details, adjust the scenes to give a better plot flow and get rid of all those wordy extraneous phrases.

Let’s jump back. The garden/book started with a seed/idea. I needed to do research which can be compared to prepping the soil. Add a little fertilizer, digging up the dirt so the seeds can grow is like doing the necessary research 

Then spend the next months getting it to grow. 

I do check my garden daily. 

And I write daily. 

The garden often is doing better than my writing. Leaves get big and green, the flowers bud, and all I need to do is add fertilizer. Whoa. That’s not quite right. I get on my knees and weed to give my flowers room to spread. Certainly like going over my previous day’s work and chopping the junk so the story is clear.

The feeling of success when a flower blooms is like when I finish a scene and it works! My garden is a source of peace for me despite the work involved, another similarity.

What do you do that to break away from the stress of writing?

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Two Steps Forward, One Step Back by Alison Henderson

Sound the trumpets! Ring the bells! I finally finished the first draft of the first three chapters (approximately 16%) of my new book. I've been terminally distracted the past few months, and sitting down to write has been like volunteering for a root canal. I've found dozens of other things to fill my time.

Another part of the problem has been my process. I'm a plotter by nature, so the idea of leaping into the creative unknown terrifies me. To beat back the paralysis of fear, I start every book with fairly detailed character profiles and a chapter-by-chapter basic outline. The outline isn't too detailed--just a paragraph for every chapter. It's mainly to prove to myself that I have enough story for an entire book. My books are all about the same length (82K-85K words), so I plan for 20 chapters of 20 double-spaced pages each. Some chapters may end up a bit shorter and some a bit longer, and I might end up with one fewer or one more, but that's the basic structure. 

My process is similar to that of writers who use note cards, except I put the outline in a single document I later manipulate at will. I usually have several plot points in mind, along with a rough idea of where they fall in the story, so I begin with those, assigning them to a chapter. This process continues until I've used up my initial ideas. That always leaves a few holes. For example, I'll bop right along for the first four or five chapters, then have a blank until Chapter Nine, when I know there has to be a turning point. If I don't already know what that is, I figure it out. Then the same thing happens again for a few chapters in the second half until the three or four chapters at the end. 

As I write, more ideas come to me, and I insert them into the outline where I think they should go, knowing I can always move them later. During the course of writing the book, some ideas will expand, taking up more space than I'd originally expected, and some will be discarded. After six books, I trust myself to ultimately fill all the blank chapter headings in the outline, but those blanks still make me nervous at the beginning.

One reason this book has been slower to get off the ground than others is that, despite my preliminary profiles, I had to get to know my characters as they began speaking and interacting with each other. My heroine in Child's Play is a newly-minted PhD in Child Psychology who had made brief appearances in the first two books in the series, so I thought I knew her. However, a visit to my daughter last month and a couple of days spent around her friends who are PhD students gave me new insights into their deeper feelings and the things they worry about. When I got home, I had to stop and go back to the beginning of my manuscript to correct and strengthen my heroine. The upside was I found I'd written some stuff I really liked. The downside was it took an extra week. Fortunately, I don't have and editor or contract breathing down my neck, so however long this book takes is how long it takes. It's more important that I get it right. 

Of course, after I devoted more time and space to proper character development, I realized I had shortchanged the suspense plot. Time to go back and plant a few clues. After all, it's always something!

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com 

You'd think I'd know by now

I work on this series once a year, usually at the first of the year. These are characters who have been with me for 6 books now, and I feel like I know them well.

As I've noted before, I have three distinct POVs going in this series: his, hers, and one that alternates between a different his/hers. Chapter 1 is hers, chapter 2 is his, chapter 3 is his/hers. I would love to write this consecutively (1, 2, 3) but I've reminded myself that I can't and still keep the distinct voices needed. I need to write Chapter 1, Chapter 4, Chapter 7, etc., in order to stay true to voice, and that means I need to jump forward and back in the plot in order to do that.

Okay, I re-discovered that one.

Here's the other thing I've re-discovered. It's not what I want to have happen. It's what is happening. By this I mean: I want these people to have a nice life and happy times and get along all the time and just hit the occasional bump.

But that's not what's happening in this world. Not everybody supports them. Some people want to kill them. They don't know who their friends are.

It's not what you want the story to be. It's what the story is. I wrote this on a slip of paper and have it taped to my computer.

Once I remembered, I knew I didn't have to look for conflict, I didn't have to invent worries, and I had more than enough to propel me forward.

But my question is: don't you think I'd know this by now?

J L
(jayellwilson.com)

Stuck in the Middle by Alison Henderson

We're all familiar with the dreaded "sagging middle", that bed of quicksand that's sucked the life from many a hardworking writer. Well, I'm smack in the middle of my current manuscript and have to admit it's getting the better of me. It isn't sagging. In fact, I've just finished a major action scene, and the hero and heroine have shared important revelations. That's part of the problem. I have to figure out ways to keep the tension building.

I'm suffering a crisis of confidence. I'm a plotter, and I'm afraid I don't have enough plot to fill the second half of the book. I've got an idea of what happens next, but when I look at my outline, all I see is "growing attraction, humorous scene with the robot, another action scene, couple makes love, climax action scene, HEA." I have details for those scenes, but they won't support another 42K words. I need to do some serious brainstorming, and I've always been lousy at it.

I've never had this problem before, but this story has the most complex mystery/suspense plot I've ever concocted. All four main characters are hiding secrets from at least two of the others. Unbeknownst to each other, the hero and heroine are working undercover on the same case. Suspicions abound, and I'm about to lose my freaking mind. 

It's so hard to remember who suspected what when, and who revealed what to whom at what time. I finally broke down and wrote it up in chronological order, like an outline, but only containing the suspense elements. At least now I can go back and check without having to page through the manuscript trying to find a couple of key sentences. Why did I ever think this story would be fun?

It would probably be easier if I were a faster writer; I might be better at keeping the details straight in my head. It would also be easier if I stuck to a single POV. (I now know why so many mysteries are written in first person.) However, I've always written my romances from both the hero and heroine's points of view. I like getting inside the hero's head, and many of my readers have said they do, too. 

The one saving grace at this point, and what will pull me out of this quagmire of creative anxiety, is that I'm delighted by what I've written so far. When I re-read earlier passages, searching for the details for my outline, I had that wonderful feeling of reading something funny and new, as if I'd had nothing to do with it. That's one of the few benefits of writing slowly. You forget what you wrote a month or two ago and can see it with fresh eyes. By the time I finish the first draft and start revisions and edits, I hope to be thoroughly entertained by the work of a complete stranger. Wish me luck!

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com  

Cruisin’ With Questions by Donna Michaels

Hello, it’s Donna Michaels blogging from the high seas! 

I’m currently cruising the Caribbean. I know. Woot! Something I've wanted to do for two decades.

This first picture was taken from the balcony off my room. If you look really hard, you can see Cuba in the background. Too cool.

The day was Just beautiful.

When we returned to our room after dinner last night, we opened the door to this. 

Isn't that cute?? 

Tonight it was a koala! 

Seriously too adorable to use. lol

The photo on the right was taken later at night from my balcony.  I sat out there and enjoyed the beautiful, calming night.

I can so get used to that! ;-)








Today, as I sat and people-watched on deck, I had voices talking in my head, whispering ideas for a book set on a cruise. Happens no matter where I go. 

I’d love to pose a question to authors, and one for readers.

I’m positive I’m not the only author who hears voices while on vacation. My question for authors:

Where have you gone, and what book was the result?

And my question for readers:

What setting, resort, island, place…etc. would you love to see in a book?

We authors would love to know!

That’s it. Keeping this short. Looking forward to reading the comments when I get back home on Sunday! You all have a great week!

Thanks for reading,

~Donna
www.donnamichaelsauthor.com

FREE Kindle Ebook on Plotting – Nov 27 through Nov 29

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Characters by Diane Burton

from The Writer's Circle

I saw the above on Facebook and could I ever identify with it. I’m a pantser. My stories always start as a scene or line of dialogue in my head . . . usually as I’m trying to go to sleep. I start writing with a vague thought of what’s going to happen. Since I write a form of romance (science fiction romance and romantic suspense) I know the story will end with a happy-ever-after. As I write, the characters come alive. And then they misbehave.

If my main character appeared in another story, I know a little about him or her. Like Rissa, the MC in The Protector, who appeared in previous Outer Rim books—The Pilot and The Chameleon. I knew she ran a tavern on the frontier, that she was tall, strong, and wore her dark hair in a single braid. Other than that, I knew nothing about her past life, what drove her, what she wanted out of life. That all came out as I wrote. Who knew she would start rescuing kids and take on a child trafficking ring led by a galactic gangster's minion? I didn't.

If I was a plotter, I would have written a detailed character analysis and filled out a GMC (Goal, Motivation, and Conflict) table plus written a detailed outline of the plot. Well, folks, if I’d done all that I would’ve told the story already and have no need to write it. That’s the way pantsers are. However . . . By the time I reach chapter eight, I have to plot, at least a little. Otherwise my characters take off on their own. Then I have to wrestle them back on track. If I’d plotted first, I wouldn’t have to keep going back and adding stuff. Someone described what I do as circular writing. Write some, go back and add, write more, go back and fix, write more, go back and change/delete, etc. Plotters think I waste time. Oh, well. It works for me.

I’m not saying my way is best. I’m not saying plotting is best. It’s what works for the writer.

Now if Rissa and Dillan would behave and quit telling me to change something, The Protector will come out this summer.

Diane Burton writes romantic adventure . . . stories that take place on Earth and beyond. She blogs here on the 8th and 30th of each month and on Mondays on her own site: http://dianeburton.blogspot.com/

Plotting and Politics? Oh no, by Barbara Edwards

Plotting and Politics? Oh no, by Barbara Edwards

Lexington-Concord April 19th Memorial

The first of the presidential hopefuls was on TV and I ran screaming from the room. No! No! No! It’s too soon!

I have a problem. I remember when the presidential race ran from July when the conventions were held, until November, when we voted. Now the race never stops.

I paced and ranted, then my sense of humor took over.

What if I were plotting this story? Would I start the action over eighteen months before the climax? 

I’ve heard candidates talk about running for president for four long years. 

Where  is the suspense? Does it take that long to reveal character? After months, who cares? Maybe that's the point. to bore us into not voting. I liked the four short months of intense campaigning. I learned everything I needed to know in that short time.

In the best written books character, experience, and what they had to offer is revealed by the author in an interesting, timely manner.

As an author what kind of president would I run? What is important to me?

Do I care if someone got a traffic ticket when they were in their twenties? Maybe, if they have an ongoing record of misconduct.

How about tax fraud? That doesn’t seem to be a big offense anymore, but I won’t vote for that one either.

How about immoral behavior? I won’t vote for a person who is so selfish they can hurt their spouse and children.

So where do I learn about the candidates if they don’t run for years in an attempt to blind me with smoke and mirrors? The plot thickens.

I’m fairly smart, like my friends, and I can do research. Lots of research to find truth, justice and the American way.

I can’t count on the news media to tell me the truth. And I have to pick through blogs to find facts not opinion.

I know that many politicians run since they legally can keep a big portion of their ‘War Chest” for their own use after they lose. I can’t trust someone who needs multi-millions of dollars to persuade me what to think.

I know politicians lie. No matter what you call an untruth, it is a lie.

How’s my plot going? Too much distraction from the interaction between the hero/heroine running for president and the goal of being president. 

Since I want a president who is honest, upholds the Constitution, is the Commander in Chief, represents all Americans, and is morally upright, I will be writing my own ending in the voting booth.

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The Master Plan and Kisses to Remember Giveaway!

I’m a plotter. I like an outline of where I’m headed. I need a calendar of events. This holds true in my writing as well…most of the time.

When I’m working on a full-length novel, I absolutely must have a solid idea of what’s going to happen when, where it’ll happen, who will be there when it does happen, and how it all gets resolved. I start by making some lists. First is a character list where I name them, describe their physical appearances, their personalities, what they want, their motivations, and what stands in the way. I usually look for pictures online that match what I envision in my head. I also jot down what kind of house they live in, what their job is, if they have any pets, family, friends. I basically create a profile of each major character so I can go back to it and remember where exactly I put that scar or tattoo.

Next up is notes on setting. I sometimes consider setting to be an additional character in the story, so I pay special attention to collecting pictures of a place, gathering information on climate, land features, and points of interest. If I can virtually tour a setting, great! If I can go there or have already been there, even better! I frequent travel sites to get a flavor of a place and see how others have described it.

Now, it’s time for plot development. This usually comes in the form of a very, very, very sloppy calendar that I handwrite in my writer’s notebook. I easily lose track of time in a story, so I literally make a Sunday through Saturday calendar of events, adding in however many weeks I’ll need. The events are usually just quick notes on scenes, but they include whose point of view readers will get in the scene and the basic action. Sometimes I also include snippets of dialogue that come to me when I’m in this planning phase. This calendar can take a few days to unfold with me working on it even when I’m not physically writing on it. Ideas pop into my head while I’m driving, eating, exercising, meditating, food shopping. You name the place and I’ve had ideas present themselves. Trust me. I just make sure that at some point it all gets onto the plot calendar.

Once this calendar is filled in and is a sturdy skeleton, I begin the first draft. I usually try for at least four full pages per writing session (I do have a day job), and here’s the crazy part. After all that planning in the calendar…I don’t always stick to the master plan! Sometimes the characters make decisions I hadn’t anticipated. Sometimes new characters show up and want a piece of the action.

Sometimes a character dies and I had no idea he/she/it was going to.

But this is what makes writing such an adventure! Even the best developed plans need to be flexible. Out of that willingness to follow the story and the characters wherever they may lead comes true entertainment. These surprises keep the writer writing and ultimately, the reader reading.

So, yes, I plot, but I don’t let that chain me. I run free when the Muse says we must.

For writers, do you plot or make it all up on the fly? For readers, can you tell which method a writer has used when you read his/her work? What are the signs?

I'm giving away one free e-copy of Kisses to Remember to one lucky reader today. Leave a comment to be entered to win. Winner must supply email address.

Toodles,

Chris

www.christinedepetrillo.weebly.com

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