Today I spent some more time with Holly’s material — going through some techniques for generating endings and saving a wrecked novel.  The Tease already has an ending in the outline, and I don’t think it’s wrecked, but I wanted to stay open to possibilities.

I’m noticing something very different about my process this year. As soon as I start the very first notes about the story, I’m asking myself what the worst case scenario is for the characters — and I go there. I use at least one or two items from the Very Worst Things — they might not be the ending, and as in this case, they might not show up in the first book, but they certainly do create drama, tension, and surprise.

I have some plot holes to spackle on Sunday, and then we’re off into wordcount-land on Monday. I’ve grown to love Scrivener — I can arrange and re-arrange note cards on a virtual bulletin board, while in RL, I have no wall space and a cat who would bite the pins out of the board anyway.

I also have most of the girls in the burlesque troupe named — Gin Fizzy, Tish, Polly Wanna, Scarlet Let Her, and our protagonist Velvet Crush (aka Anna). I’m stuck for 3, but I can get going with what I have… because at least I have their street names! I also know the names of some burlesque characters who will come in the next book when some things… change.

Onward! Monday, you will see the end of her set in the theater… and Horrible Realization #2.

However.

The love interest and the boss are nameless, as is the current troupe leader. This is problematic. Ever since I was 15, I’ve struggled with getting a story launched until I actually have the right name for the character. Then everything about the character crystalizes, and I’m able to move forward.

Today I wanted to ditch the whole thing 10 minutes before my Writing Hour ended and play computer games or something. But I resisted, and went to Nymbler.com to start hunting names.

The hunt continues. I don’t want to use names I’ve used before (Stephen King, how do you do it?) and I don’t want what I call the Z Brite Syndrome, where you have characters that are all named Nothing and Zillah and Sioux and Christian (and Steve). It works for an atmospheric gothic piece, but that’s not the direction for this one.

Characters, I will name you tomorrow, dammit! All of you! This novel has percolated long enough!

I have started a “WIP Inspiration Board” on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/nikki_moxie/wip-inspiration/

I’ve spent most of my pre-dawn hours this week with Donald Maas’s excellent Breakout Novel workbook — I had a feeling that my plot was lopsided. This morning, I spent a long time staring at my notecards in Scrivener. Sometimes I’d tinker with a sentence to up the tension. Sometimes I’d switch places.

I moved the Killer-POV-murder to later in the story — it was the opening scene (I know, very Konrathian). Maas pointed out that a lot of newbie writers make the mistake of opening with a murder as a way of creating InstaTension, which he dislikes because he doesn’t care about anyone yet — and if he wanted to see someone hurt by a nameless sicko, he’d watch the evening news. Touche. But in this story, it’s the only place that works, otherwise it looks like chicklit with clusters of violence here and there.

Don’t get me wrong, I love women and I want them to read the book. But I can tell when it’s not balanced. I think most stories at least come within arms’ reach of cliche, so I’m just going to follow my intuition on that point. I can change it later if I want to.

I’m just going to have to make the killer and the victim really compelling in that short, dark scene.

It’s time to start the actual writing. The last 5 scenes or so aren’t as strong as they could be, but a lot of the things I do early in the book will influence or change them, so it’s fine if I shore them up once I have some wordcount. I’ve hit a plateau in the pre-novel putter — just polishing a bit here and there rather than assembling the structure.

Monday, we start the Awful First Draft.

How bad is it that 4 doesn’t sound like much to me in terms of serial killers?

Next step: Monday, I rewrite my plot cards in terms of the Sentence Lite. Each scene gets a setting, protagonist, antagonist, and twist. The antagonist doesn’t need to be the villain… in fact, in the first scene of the Mythos Story, the antagonist was a doorjamb. Jacy begins the story by walking smack into one. Then, it’s time to Sit Down And Write.

Awful First Draft, here we go!

1: I have figured out the moment at which the audience realizes the Awful Truth about the Big Bad Wolf. Whether or not we apprehend BBW in book 1 or book 3 is still up in the air, but I decided it’s better if the audience lives with the dread for a while.

2. I have figured out a great way to up the stakes early in Book 1 — a real “punch in the gut” moment for poor Anna. I cannot WAIT to write that scene.

The Wolf is smart, resourceful, patient, organized, and slick. Worst of all, he wants everything to be perfect for the object of his affection — which involves a lot of practice. Eeek.

I’ve spent the past 2 mornings with Donald Maass’s Building the Breakout Novel. As much as I adore Holly, sometimes a different perspective will jar something new out of you, and I’ve been thinking sideways for 20 weeks. I think I figured out how to up the stakes early enough in the book to matter.

A trilogy is a challenge, because I want to be sure I save enough for the last book that it’s got real impact and pushes the protagonist to her ultimate limit. However, I can’t hold back too much in the first two books, otherwise no one will care enough to get through book one — let alone book three!

I took a step back and realized that the stakes aren’t quite high enough. My protagonist isn’t in quite enough danger in Book 1 to make it interesting. I need to throw more rocks at her — or, at least, different rocks.

Last night, Steve and I watched The Lovely Bones.* In one scene, a girl was in the killer’s house, looking for evidence. He came home. I was on the edge of my seat, even though the commercials had told me that scene was coming.

Several years ago, I watched a film called A Man Escapes. I was actually holding my breath as the protagonist sneaked past the guards, because I was worried that I would breathe too loudly and the guards would look up and see him.

I read Whiskey Sour by J. A. Konrath with one hand almost covering my eyes when a character ate a bag of candy. Some of the candy bars had a surprise from the killer, and the character was a glutton. I knew that something was coming, and as he ate two or three candy bars and nothing happened, I grew more and more on edge.

To create suspense, I need to clue the audience in that Something is Coming. It had better be a Big Bad Something. If they don’t see it coming (which is fine in some scenes) then I can create gore, shock, or alienation. The audience needs to have something specific to worry about — meaning protag they want to survive and plausible danger – or they’re not invested.

1. Deadline, a la Connie Willis’s Blackout — or trigger date, like Caleb Carr’s Alienist.

2. A monster that the protagonist fears and the audience perceives, like in Alien or Jaws

3. Ticking bomb, like… I don’t know, something with a ticking bomb in it. Something with a countdown.

QotD: What are some of the most suspenseful scenes you’ve ever read or seen?

*I loved the book and I liked the movie. The 18 months since I’ve read the book are probably what allowed me to enjoy the movie and its cool visuals. It’s a very different story than the book was, and I’m not sure why, but I hihgly recommend Sebold’s Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon. I recommend the film with some reservations.

One of my greatest challenges is Narrowing Things The Hell Down. I tend to write sprawling epics with multiple POVs and multiple protagonists. Step 1 in creating a novel in the Sideways method is to write a 30-word sentence that touches on the protagonist, antagonists, their needs, and a twist. Of course, the 30-word limit means that your sentence has to use words cleverly that imply the conflict, needs, tension, etc. Often you only have 30 seconds when a reader picks up your book and looks at the cover. If the first sentence of the novel or the first sentence of the blurb don’t grab them, it’s curtains for you and that reader.

So here goes:

A fledgling therapist suspects that her client committed a string of grisly murders — and her two worlds collide when the killer strikes a member of her amateur burlesque troupe.

Antagonist and need: The killer is the antagonist, and since there are a string of murders, one can assume that he needs to kill for some reason. We don’t know what drives his compulsion to kill, but if there is a body count, there’s a need behind it.

Protagonist, need, and twist: Fledgling therapist implies that she’s new to the field and has, to some degree, to prove herself. Therapists are charged to help clients overcome their issues (so hopefully the reader wonders: can a sociopath be rehabilitated? what if she’s wrong? what is he seeing her for?) and keep what they say confidential, unless they have reason to suspect immanent harm to the client or someone else. Breaking confidentiality is something they would have to defend to the ethics board — risking citation or losing their license. Burlesque is the twist. She must love it, because it’s not something that a person will do unwillingly. She would also need to keep it secret from her day job, because she could lose credibility or clients. It ups the stakes when one of her troupe members is murdered, because that increases her personal vested interest in it (I’m now personally invested in finding the killer because he took out someone I really like — but is it my client? am I next? do I risk my career by revealing my hobby?)

Thoughts?