PLOTSTORM 7

Sorry I've been MIA for several days, but let's play catch up.

 

I brainstormed with my two author friends, which basically consisted of me telling them what I had so far, and then them shooting ideas at me. So both of them felt I'm at a point where I should just start writing the story and let the characters take over, since I've developed them fairly well.

 

Here's a great example of how God often comes alongside me, (or actually, brings me alongside Himself is how it usually works..LOL!) to help me plotstorm. I mean, He's the most important person in my life, and the entire reason I write, well besides for my future readers. Hee hee. Anyway, so His input is extremely valuable.

 

I was praying about my books theme, which I also usually like to have prior to penning my mess draft. (What I call my first draft--just ask Camy and Robin why it's called a mess draft...sigh.) Anyway, I like to be able to sum the theme of a story up in one word. So what I wanted with this was "Balance."

 

The heroine needs to learn the balance of contentment, and the hero needs to learn the balance that seeing God rightly can bring to his life.

 

So I looked up scriptures that will potentially be the scripture theme verse for the book. A couple days ago, after praying about the book's theme, and knowing it needed to be "balance" I go to weekend service at church and theyr'e talking about guess what?

 

Yep. Balance. Hee he. I just love when this happens because I felt it was confirmation, and believe me my hand was heating the paper taking notes.

 

THEN, earlier before the night service, there was a womens' event at church in which the speaker did a magnificent job of discussing what?

 

Contentment....and balance.

 

Cool, eh?

 

So even though I don't have all the scenes in sharp focus, I have some major ones etched in my brain, enough to start the story.

 

So what I will do now is morph into a panster. I will wait until I have a few days of uninterrupted time (yeah right...what's that?) and WRITE. Just get the bones of the story down. It flows better if I can write the rough draft in under a couple of weeks. Yes, you heard right. But don't feel bad if your rough draft takes years to write. We are all different and you have to do what works for you. Think of food...pot roast would taste nasty after being mirowaved..but slow-cook that baby all day and WOW! YUM! Delicious. Some stories NEED to be slow-broiled over time. So if you're more of a crockpot writer than a microwaver...fear not. I heard somewhere, wish I could remember where, that it took the author of Gone with the Wind TEN years to write that story....and look what a classic it is.

 

Now, my research is a different story. I reasearch a series for literally YEARS before writing begins and the research is then ongoing. 2-5 years is avg research time for me. I've crash-coursed a research for a book in 6 m to a year, but I did not at all feel as secure about that book, and will probably double and triple check my research and let the story gel prior to subbing.

 

Anyway, that's where we're at with plotstorming.

 

An questions, feel free to email me.

 

Squirrel