Tomorrow I begin the outline for my current, as yet untitled, WIP (Work in Progress). I’m excited and nervous. Excited because I’m embarking on a new story with new characters, and nervous for the same reason. When you have the unknown stretched out in front of you–along with a deadline that’s mere months away (August)–it can be daunting. But I’m going to take it one step at a time. 

As those of you who follow my blog know, I completed the revised, twenty-seven page synopsis last week.  The outline will be considerably longer, but there are a few things I need to determine before I can start breaking the story down into scenes. Primarily, I need to decide on points of view, whether to use first or third person, and structure.

Point of view: I’ve already figured out that I’ll have two points of view. These are the thirtysomething sisters, currently named Maya and Rebecca.

First or third: Right now, I believe both of their stories will be told in third person. That’s the way the story is coming to me at the moment, but I know from experience that may change.

Structure: This is my biggest challenge right now. I need to determine the best way to tell the story. For example, in Before the Storm, I began with several chapters in the present and then began adding chapters from the past, slowly letting the reader in on the secrets from the past that shed light on what was happening in the current day.  That’s often the structure I use in my books. In The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes, the first chapter is in the present from Cory’s point of view, followed by CeeCee’s story in the past. Her story is told chronologically (unusual for me), with some leaps during which the years are compressed. Added to the structure are some short letters from CeeCee’s mother. ( Letting you in on a very minor regret, if I had CeeCee to write over, I would have skipped that first chapter from Cory’s point of view. I think it gave away a tiny bit too much.)

In my WIP, there’s a very strong backstory that informs the present-day story. I don’t think I can interweave the past with the present as I did in Before the Storm, though, because the reader is going to need to know exactly what happened in the past very early in the present day story. There won’t be much time for all that weaving.

Ironically, as I was stewing about how to approach this, I realized that the very book I’ve been reading before sleep each evening offered a possible solution. I just finished Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders (loved it!), and while the book is nothing at all like my WIP, I think its structure might work very well for my story. Brooks divides the book into three sections. The first is called Leaf Fall, 1666 and is one short chapter set in the present. The second section is called Spring, 1665, in which she takes us through the events of the preceding year until we reach the third section, again called Leaf Fall, 1666, when we’re returned to the present. This is the structure I’m going to play with for my WIP. Start in the present, quickly move to the past and allow the past to lead directly back to the present again. I’ll let you know if it works.

For now, it’s off to bed so I can get cracking on this in the morning.  

I’m sitting cramped in a corner of the library at the First Colony Inn in Nags Head, where all the photographers at John’s workshop are buzzing around me, working on their images. We’ve already checked out of our room, thus the reason I’m in the library. Not sure how much more work I’ll be able to get done before we have to take off, because any minute they’ll be starting the slideshow of some of the images people took during the workshop, and I know I’ll want to watch. I didn’t finish the synopsis, but I made excellent progress and hope I can finish it tomorrow because Tuesday I’ll be working at a campaign office all day (election day) so I don’t sit home, chewing my nails down to my knuckles.  

Here’s what I accomplished yesterday and this morning: I outlined the story by weaving together the four Point-of-View characters’ actions that I wrote up the day before. In scenes in which more than one character appears, I decided who had the most emotional investment in the interaction and determined that that person will have the POV in that scene. I’m about two thirds of the way through, and it gets harder as I move toward the climax and all the complex elements of the story come together. As I work on this, I have to keep going back to my character sketches to remind myself of the characters’ various strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, this will be second nature, but I’m still just getting to know them. I also came up with a working title, which I’ll keep to myself for the moment.

So that’s it! Looks like I have a few minutes before the slideshow starts, so I’m going to squeeze in a little work. See you from home tomorrow!

I’m off to breakfast, but wanted to quickly catch you up on the second day of creating a story. Here’s what I did:

I changed my mind about a couple of the Points of View, settling for now on four women, three of them thirty-nine/forty and one eighteen. 

I finished the character sketches.

I named absolutely everyone, first and surnames, and made some necessary family charts.

I then created a storyline “thread” for each POV character. That means I took each one separately and listed what happens to her during the story, focusing more on action than emotion. Emotion comes later, although some of it crept in, of course, since it informs the action. I gave each line of the thread a number or letter, so that I can move the lines around later. (In other words, I may insert action number 67 between lines FF and GG. If I were at home, I’d have these actions on notecards spread across my dining room table, so I could move them around at ease. Right now, everything is going into a notebook.

Today I’ll start weaving the threads together. But for now, I’m being called to breakfast!