Elisabeth Kent

Well, I am proud to say I finished a draft for chapter one, scene one.  And now it’s time for lunch.  Yippie!

I seem to be getting faster now.  This scene is pretty good, I think.

Up to 583 solid words for chapter 1/scene 1 of book X.    Time to stretch the legs, refuel the brain.

This technique has earned me 200 words in 50 minutes.  Slow progress, but the trade-off is they are 200 solid words. 

Well, I still don’t have the 75-90% of this fantasy novel worked out 100% yet, but I am pretty comfortable with the rest of what I’ve drafted, particularly my honed 1-25% which I hammered out yesterday morning.  I have soooo been wanting to write, rather than outline, for a while now, so this morning, I said, “Let’s do it!”  So, I’m starting with a draft of chapter one.  Wish me luck!  Let’s see how fast I can type up 2,000 words (my target word count for the first scene).  I’m starting now, at 8:15 a.m.  Here we go. 

Okay, so yesterday was very productive because I sketched out the major characters of Book I of the X series, then I drafted up Chapters 1-4 and the last two chapters (I’m aiming for 20 chapters total, 90,000 words, at the moment, though that may increase).  Today, I plan to finish my chapter outlines and run them past a CP or two for feedback.  I’m really liking my new idea for the heroine of this book. 

I’m finally off work, and you know what that means — back to writing full-time!  Hee hee.  I am sitting here at Panera today, sipping on my warm and cozy Hazelnut coffee (with half-n-half), plotting…scheming…skulking…  Ha.  No, seriously, the plotting part is true — I’m plotting the End of Days (and trying to incite the FBI to monitor my blog with a post like this, apparently!).  It’s for my story, Mr. Fed!  So, I need to mentally get back into the groove with this story (that’s what the coffee is for)–

OH NO!  THEY’RE TAKING AWAY MY HAZELNUT!

Oh, wait.  Phew.  They just put out some fresh brew.  Thank the java gods!  So, I will reload, then continue plotting world domination.  Happy writing, y’all! 

OH NO!  THEY’RE OUT OF HALF-N-HALF!  AUGH!

Oh, yeah.  I’m totally a plotter.  Not that I can’t pants (NaNo makes you pants, and yes, pants is now a verb), but I love to plot.  Actually, maybe it’s best that I plot.  Otherwise my characters go haywire, like breeding-rabbits on Speed.  So, today, the Soldier in me is crying out to me to write, write, write!  But the Commander is giving the Strategist time to do her thing.

So, how do I plot?  First, let me begin by saying, I still crack up at the end of this commercial:

Then, after I distract myself with YouTube videos, I plot.  For this Fantasy story, I had been using OneNote, but today I switched to Excel because I’m no longer scouting (and OneNote is a good tool for Scout), now I’m plotting for two characters (the hero and heroine).  I wanted to see how and when their stories merge together, side-by-side, and long-hand writing in a notebook isn’t time-efficient, so I went to Excel.

In column A, I listed the major plot points (the set-up, opportunity, complications & higher stakes, etc.).  In column B, I wrote out the bare essentials of the hero’s journey (GMC, basically) — I am not doing scene-sequel here; I’ll work on that later.  In column C, I will write up the bare essentials of the heroine’s journey.  Then, since I have several other important characters whose stories dovetail with the hero and heroine’s stories, I will continue creating columns for them as well.

This may not be the best way to plot for you, but so far it is working well for me.  And now, I’m turning off YouTube and returning to my plot! 

Wow!  I hashed out characters and plot today and began writing the synopsis for my X story.  THANK YOU, LA-TESSA!  We used a brainstorming kit and Yahoo chat to do some deep digging to possible characters and plot situations, and I am quite pleased with the results!    I WILL finish this book!