Tag Archives: Mt. Shasta

Progrep 12: Pushing the Reader’s Buttons

Posted on June 21, 2014 | Leave a comment

Push the right buttons, and you’ll activate the reader’s emotions. Push the wrong ones, and the readers go boom.

One of my buttons: characters who are tortured, emotionally and physically. That’s a button that’s risky to push. Explosive.

A safer button: characters who have tenuous control of their situation and their selves. Most readers can relate.

A nearly universal button : characters who have lost family, home, country, health–or are themselves lost.

Dunno why all these buttons are about character. But there they are.

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Progrep 11: Parenthetical Play-within-a-Story

Posted on June 19, 2014 | 1 comment

I have a play-within-a-play in my novel (or, more properly, the characters are putting on a play).  The play isn’t central to the action (I originally inserted it in order to give the characters an excuse to gather regularly), so I hadn’t thought much about its content until now.

Inevitably, whether I want it to or not (I want it to), the play will comment on the novel, but I don’t know at this moment what those comments might be, nor how covert, nor which devices might convey them.  And I’m not going to try to figure that out (at least, not right now).  Instead, I’ll flesh out the play to serve my characters’ needs (because, after all, their needs come first), and in the process I expect to discover connections that they care about.

Mental parentheses on my part.

 

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Progrep 10: Character Under Pressure

Posted on June 18, 2014 | Leave a comment

When Maggie is afraid, she makes art, but right now, she’s afraid of art.

Heh heh heh.  Sorry, Maggie.

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Progrep 9: Doctoring

Posted on June 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

This morning I finished chapter five, editing infelicities before I move on to chapter six.  You could say I’ve been doctoring the doctor scene.  🙂

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Progrep 8: Reaction, Not Just Action

Posted on June 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

I keep reminding myself that each scene must further the character’s purpose, no matter how many other purposes that scene might have.  The scene must spring from the character’s motive(s) and show us something about the character’s inner landscape, offering the reader an emotional handle, a hand to grip.  The character’s reaction matters as much, if not more, than the action itself.

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Progrep 7: Paths to Discovery

Posted on June 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

Why I’m working from brief notes rather than outlining the novel:  I know things that the characters don’t (like What the Heck Is Going On), so I have to remember that they won’t do what I would do; they’re confronting a mystery, and they’ll go off in all different directions rather than follow what I know to be the straight path to answers.  I have to slow down and take the time to discover what directions they want to head, then let them head in those directions.  In the first past through a scene, I concentrate on laying down the bricks for one particular thing that my notes say has to happen (a plot point, for example, or dialogue that contains necessary exposition).  In the second pass, I make the discoveries:  the mossy bits in the cracked brick, the chips in the mortar.

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Progrep 6: Chatty Characters

Posted on June 11, 2014 | Leave a comment

Turns out the characters had more to say, and boy did they say it this morning; I planned to simply reread the Comparing Notes scene before moving on, but I ended up adding more dialogue.  The mysterious action scene will have to wait until tomorrow.

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Progrep 5: Brisket

Posted on June 10, 2014 | Leave a comment

The characters have finished comparing notes, but Spencer isn’t telling everything he knows.  Next scene:  action and a deepening mystery at the old farmhouse.

I’m getting closer to the meat of the story, and Maggie eats brisket instead of donuts.

 

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Progrep 3: Question the Fork

Posted on June 8, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’ve been mulling over a plot fork that I’ll soon face.  A few minutes ago, I was quilting, and Peter Schilling’s cover of “Major Tom” was playing, and I realized that it’s not X or Y, it’s  X and Y.

Sometimes the fork is a spoon.

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Progrep 2: Dialogue Drives the Bus

Posted on June 7, 2014 | Leave a comment

This morning I started the scene in which five of the characters compare notes for the first time and realize that Something Strange is going on.  Because the point of the scene is that they exchange information, I’ve written just their dialogue–who says what, when–along with a few interior POV notes.  When I make the second pass through the scene (probably tomorrow), I’ll add the characters’ body language and interactions with the setting.  I don’t usually do dialogue first and everything else second; I usually put everything in as I go because I discover more that way.  But this time, I’m driving to a specific destination and not on a discovery mission.

Prior to starting the dialogue scene this morning, I spent about fifteen minutes editing the previous scene.  By my count, Maggie eats at least two donuts in that scene.  One of the donuts has chocolate sprinkles.

 

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