Day 135

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

28 Dec 2016

Merry Christmas all, and good luck at enjoying a restful, fun and productive time over the holidays. I feel your pain. Or maybe that’s just my pain. Lol balance. And time. Just look at it fly!

Anyways, back on point. The serials are picking up incrementally - Wattpad is still slow, but I’ve got at least one reader per story on Jukepop and textnovel - that’s good, right?? Or maybe not, but I can see how, as you go along, readers would be more likely to invest and engage. The capacity to finish a story must be proven, and all that. The capacity to tell a good one, however… well, I guess there’s grace for that. And rewrites… I’m thinking that, assuming I can get through rewrites before my next deadline (April) on Blind the Eyes, while making enough money, traveling and finding a place to stay that doesn’t incur debt, then I can at least map out character motivations and plot, and maybe even scenes for at least one of the two serials, lining it up for rewrites and eventual publication, if I can build up a decent readership. And by decent, I mean more than a dozen. Ugh.

Back to the first priority. I feel like the current character arc is strong(er) for Cole, so I’m in the process of porting that over to my book map, which should confirm, at the least, that protagonist agency is driving appropriate action from start to finish. If I can get that ironed out and sent over to my editor for review, and then weave in supporting cast or any additional viewpoints to integrate secondary character arcs with the plot, and get that all sorted, I can finally, for real this time, start rewrites! Sigh. The good thing about this process is, tying the plot to a single character arc pretty much writes the scenes for you, at least as far as I can tell, since it straight-up maps to Goal-conflict-reaction all the way through. Although, possibly I just feel like Cole has motivation and agency through the plot because I drew it with connecting arrows… but hey, that’s what you have an editor to check for, isn’t it?

I’m not too sure about the wants/goals motivations still; I can’t work out how to do strong overarching goals with any subtlety - it all just comes out like some kind of fantasy epic or anime quest or something - so it’s more a series of incremental goals. Not a recipe for ultimate reader engagement, but I don’t see a way to follow all the ‘rules’ and still write this story with these characters with integrity. And since I’ve started that other serial to explore if things went in a different direction, I’m not too interested in completely overhauling the cast, plot and setting for BtE. On the plus side, the current character arc and book map allow for most of the same plot points as the original draft (minus all the side stories, which I’m hoping to preserve as freebie and novella fodder), so there’s a possibility that I could revise to correct motivations instead of wholesale rewriting 80,000ish words… But maybe I’m just being lazy and should throw it all out… Nah.

Part 2

Book map is turning out to be more difficult than anticipated. I think it’s working off of a three-act structure? Which is annoying. Or maybe just challenging. Hard to tell. Based on the spreadsheet, I’ve made it to the early act 2 stage, which is something (only on plot points, though; need to go map points to goal-conflict-response and character motivation still), and only for the Cole-arc plot points, but hey, celebrate small wins, right?

Start time: 1 & 3 pm

Abbotsford, BC - home/couch

Drinking: black tea

Post Index