I get to write twice a week - three times, if I'm lucky or dogged enough to pin down the time. I have to plan what I'm going to do so that the slot isn't wasted, but allow myself leeway if serendipity presents me with something - usually a book - that offers me information, context or colour that will add to the story.
Deadlines are also important. It fixes my mind so that I don't start arranging coffees with friends or decide I need to go shopping when I reach a tricky bit. Sure, I have my 'water-cooler', staring-out-of-the-window moments, but I don't let them hijack my time.
At 28, 000 words, I'm at the point where, without the tao of Larry Brooks, I would be terrified of the gaping holes in the story, teetering on the edge of panic over how threads will tie and losing sleep over how to resolve the twists and turns and characters' stakes into a satisfying ending.
But I am keeping the faith. The pieces to fill the spaces will, I know, come through the process of examining what needs to happen to make this a darn good story and then giving myself specific tasks to work on. It sounds very business-like, but in fact it focuses and sharpens my creative processes.
I have four boxes set out on four pieces of paper:
- Box one: the set-up (which includes the inciting incident and the first plot point)
- Box two: the response (smack in the middle is the first pinch point and ends with a midpoint which transitions part two into part three)
- Box three: the attack (smack in the middle is the second pinch point, the second plot point separates parts three and four)
- Box four: the resolution
The set-ups are a good way to start a writing session. I know which characters I need to introduce and what their stakes are, so this is how I get stuck in as the caffeine begins to percolate through my system. Then after about an hour the 'zone' is nigh. I can sit and write for at least another 90 minutes without feeling time pass. Last weekend three hours passed without me noticing. Everything is smooth and flowing, and I can hear the dialogue and see the facial expressions and movements of the characters playing through my mind like a film. I can feel sad, happy or excited as I write, and hope that this will come across to a reader.
Again, using Brooks' techniques, when I am mulling over plot ideas, writing them down as a series of 'what ifs' is a neat way to see how the whole idea will play without wasting 2,000 words finding it doesn't. It also works for the initial idea for a novel to see if it has the strength to go the whole hog.
For Tankard's Legacy it was: what if a girl living a lonely isolated life on a far off island is kidnapped by pirates looking for her father? What if her father isn't who she thinks he is? What if the pirates believe she will lead them to their treasure, but she doesn't actually know how to help them? What if she isn't who she thinks she is?
Basically, if the answers to these questions are a rich source of possibilities that lead to more 'what ifs' then it's a good chance your idea will hold water and sustain itself for the length of a novel.
And the novel itself, no matter that it has been meticulously planned, seems to develop a flavour of its own as it grows. It can be surprising how from its shadowy presence in my imagination it shifts into a reality of its own which is deeper, stronger... yet somewhat unfamiliar.
So, for now, Book Two of The Treasure of Orphir Chronicles still has no title. It's fairly tatty at the edges with typos and names and dates missing, but I have 50 odd pages of a story that didn't really exist before Christmas, and that for me is a little bit of magic.
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