Brain, Can We Have a Talk?

Okay, so we already know that I'm having difficulty staying on task. But this is getting ridiculous. Normally, the patrons of my particular brain diner are nice and patient and are willing to go into their neat little files to wait for another day. I think they've finally caught on though. I keep getting new ideas and don't get back to the ones in the file. So basically I need to write a whole lot faster. But Micah and unnamed heroine (which will drive me nuts until I figure it out) need to be quiet. It's bad enough that Kaitlin and Caleb are working through their issues and Mark/Casanova and Kate/Amy have way too many names. But they are separate genres and each need their special moment in the sun. But there is also the immortal and his key who are getting crazy in my head.

To recap, Forsaken (paranormal), Casanova (category rom), Fearless (paranormal) and WFTWTE (paranormal, yup I'm not telling you the name) are all on the surface of my brain or seated at the counter in the diner and all are demanding to be served. Meanwhile, Fallen is sitting waiting for dessert (revisions). Wait and see what else my brain serves up.

Playing Along (Sort of)

I've been tagged by bloggingexperiments. So the deal is to list 7 random things about myself. I thought, where's the fun in that? Since I'm working on revisions, I'll give you 7 random things about Breann, which will make me work harder.

1. Loved to wear pink underwear when she was a teenager.
2. Now, wears plain cotton bikini briefs under her leather pants.
3. Doesn't have time for pets, especially when she has to go out and capture daemons all night.
4. Her comfort food is pizza, sausage and mushroom.
5. Got her bachelor's in fine art with an emphasis in photography.
6. Keeps a pair of fuzzy slippers under her bed.
7. Loved the movie Some Kind of Wonderful and had a crush on Eric Stolz. (You know you all did, too)

My job here is done. If you feel like playing along, leave a comment and I'll tag you and link to your blog. You can do either 7 random things about yourself or one of your characters.

I'm Sorry But the Restaurant is Full

The characters rattling around in my brain are growing exponentially. See I've had three new ideas recently. So I've got two women plus three sisters (a series), trotting around up there. Thank goodness I haven't figured out men for them yet. Then there are my old faithfuls, Breann and Jude from FALLEN, still waiting patiently for me to finish the category with Natalie and Chase. Sitting in the far corner are Kaitlin and Caleb. They aren't trying to get my attention at all right now, but they are sitting there, waiting. Then there is Mike and Phoebe who are feeding me bits and pieces of their story. They are very polite about it and don't mind waiting. And then to top it off are Alec and Lacy who had been waiting in line and when I was challenged on Romance Divas, they slipped in. Of course, they don't sit at the same table and tend to glower at each other, but they are there. So I've got a packed dining area right now. Sure some of these characters will slip back out to wait in line again and hopefully, I can see some of these characters through dessert(revisions) and out the door. Sure they might visit for a drink sometime, but they won't have to wait anymore. So I'm sorry any new ideas that may try to make a break for it, but I just don't have time for you now. So if you'd like to take a menu and wait in the bar, we should be able to seat you some time next year.

Ah, I Hear Voices

If you've ever been in a conversation with a writer, you'll slowly wonder if she's actually going insane as she prattles on about the characters that talk to her or interrupt what she's doing. What is it really that goes on in our brains? Well, there are characters and plots roaming around up there. Do we actually hear "voices"? Yes and no. The voices don't tell me to do things or try to control my life. What they are are the characters I've made up revealing themselves to me. They are ideas, conversations, discussions, concepts. They are integral to me actually being able to write. I don't tell the story. My characters do. I don't plot the story. I may have a plan that the characters may or may not choose to do as they reveal their personalities and what makes them special.

Is this the unique voice editors and agents go on about? I think so. Because I have a certain style of writing, but the way it's written is determined by the character whose point of view I'm in. Each character thinks about things differently, expresses him/herself differently. They build the novel not be. I just take dictation from the voices in my head and help them when they get stuck on a word or two. To work on your voice, you have to listen to the characters or in other words walk the story in his/her shoes.

Oh, Linky

http://cte.jhu.edu/techacademy/web/2000/kochan/charactertraits.html

Listing of character traits. Yay!

My Outline

Using a little bit of everything I came up with my plot. First off, I'd written a draft in November for NaNo. I plotted then by writing scenes on notecards. I incorporated way too much back story, but I've been able to salvage some of it for the rewrite. I also realized that the story wasn't as dark as I wanted it. So I add another villian. Originally there was a supervillian and a villian the heroine was after. Enter villian who is after heroine. Now all these villians work together or not as the plot dictates. Also, I needed my hero to have a more compelling reason to tell her to stay with her. And it had become a bit too date like, which for the story I wanted to tell was not the proper format. So plotting exercise two:

First I storyboarded my first novel with poster board and Post-its. This allowed me to go back through the entire story and figure out where things could be added. Well, this is when I realized the story just wasn't the story for this novel. From the Snowflake Method, I knew my one sentence (it was my original idea). The next step is to form a paragraph from that sentence with about five sentences. The next step was about characters which had me going around the internet looking for clues. I could figure out my characters goals, motivations, and conflicts, but they were all plot related. Not so much on the internal conflict. So, from the internet I found Dark Erotica and read a dozen articles in a few days. I couldn't decide whether to use spreadsheet or notecards or Word.

In the end I used a Word outline form and listed these things:
Inciting Event - Denial
Crisis - Anger
Climax/Reversal - Despair
Ordeal - Sacrifice
Confrontation - Acceptance

I put each of my five scenes from the Snowflake as the beginning scene of each event. From there I used the second word or the five stages of grief to work where each character was with their internal conflict and built scenes that would lead to the next big event. Every scene has a purpose. Under each scene I would write what I wanted to accomplish with that scene. So now when I'm working with my story, I have open my book plot outline, my first draft, and the new novel document. If I find something I want to keep from the old draft, I cut and paste and revise to go with the new story line. I've kept the same scenes from the first four chapters but am rewriting them.

Can You Guess What I Did Today?

Yep, I spent all day reading articles over at Morgan Hawke's website. I do feel like I have a slightly better understanding of the Character Arc and now have to sit down with my characters and feel them out. I'm horrible about filling our character sheets. After all what relevance does it really have on my story if my character had her wisdom teeth out when she was eighteen. Basically I think that there's a lot of information that I just don't need to know for the story and if I need to know it, it will be there. I do like the three question method of figuring out your character. Morgan Hawke stole it from PBW (Morgan says so on her site).

"And then what?Once you have a good Idea for a Character -- you need to make that character YOURS. Begin by asking three Questions*: (*Shamelessly stolen from Paperback Writer's blog.)

What are you, and what do you do?
What do you want?
What's the absolute worst possible thing that could happen to me?

You need to know all three of these answers with EVERY main character you craft for every story you write. (The Hero, the Ally, AND the Villain too!) The "worst possible thing" gives me EACH characters' Ordeal -- their darkest moment in the story. Combining all THREE "Worst Possible Things" creates the "Crash and Burn" moment in the story where everything falls apart just before the story's big Climax."

Tomorrow I vow not to read anything I haven't already read and actually put together a feasible plot for my story so that I may write said story during Fast Draft which begins this weekend. Yeah. Oh, and figure out where to print out 3 copies of the first 25 pages so that I may enter a contest. Deadline March 1st. :)