Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Villains, plotlines, and doughy apple cobbler.

And now the moment you have all been waiting for...I will reveal the secret to making a good cobbler:

BUY ONE. Or, at the very least--DO NOT SUBSTITUTE TORTILLA FLOUR FOR REAL FLOUR. EVEN IF YOU HAVE RUN OUT OF REAL FLOUR.

Anyhow, as I mentioned in my last post, my latest WIP is a mystery set in sunny, or more appropriately, windy New Mexico.

In an effort to procrastinate writing that dreaded first draft--er--productively manage my time, I began working on my "elevator pitch" while stalling--ehem--plotting my first chapter.

But seriously. I learned quite a bit from my previous wip's: I like to get a skeleton plot out as early as possible, I like to get to know my characters, I like to be mean to my characters--thereby producing conflict, and I like to do it all as efficiently as possible. I mean, first drafts already take up an exorbitant amount of time, why make matter worse?

So, while I DO know where this story is going, having recently read that writing those one sentence, vague hook things that are at once intriguing and horribly annoying can help you keep your plot in focus (When accompanied by a short description of the story that vaguely resembles a back cover description), I decided to write one.

It looks something like this:

When three teens are murdered and one disappears,a former PI must confront her past to secure her niece's future.

Or this:

When three teens are murdered and her niece disappears, a former PI must return to the life she left to save the family she loves.

Now I'm off to do some character studies on my villains. Muahahaha.

No comments:

Post a Comment