Planning Ahead

Confession: In the last twenty-four hours, I've had my writing torn apart, then held up as a paragon of virtue. I'm confused and happy and humbled. But for the first time in two weeks, I really feel like a writer again.

Reading:

• "Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?", by William Gay
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 80%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"
• "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%

I had a major breakthrough on Ferian today, and ran into a major stumbling block. It's like getting a cramp on the last lap of a race. I'll still finish, but instead of racing to the end, I'll limp in.

First, the breakthrough. I still have the story listed as "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," because the general story arc I'm going to tell has that title in my head. But as I wrote my outline this morning, I discovered that there was a lot to get through before I could introduce that cold. In fact, there was so much setup that the setup needed to have a bit of an arc itself.

Here's what I mean by that--in order for the events I had planned to work, they had to be set up and developed earlier in the story. First, there are some pieces of stage business, by which I mean moving Ferian from one location to another, and establishing what assets he has at his disposal. That kind of exposition can be really boring, because it can allow the reader to see the internal workings of the story.

You've seen plays, no doubt. Scenery has to be moved. In well staged productions, your attention is drawn by action on stage left while the scenery is moved on stage right. When you look back, it's been done already, and the spell isn't broken. Or, the movement of the scenery is worked into the visual look of the play, so you want to watch, and again, the spell is maintained.

Same thing here. So to disguise the setup, I needed some story for those scenes, and I found it in a way that would also serve to develop Ferian and introduce a few minor characters that would play a part in the next section.

I now think of "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" as the first chapter of a novel. Chapter two will now be titled "Ferian Fetlock Hitches a Ride," and chapter three will be called "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold." My tentative title for chapter four, as I've mentioned before, is "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife," although I find it likely that the story I've envisioned for that section will also result in multiple chapters.

Together, those three arcs will serve as the first act of the novel. It will be a standard three act progression, where the first act introduces the players, the second act complicates the situation, and the third act complicates them almost beyond redemption, before a resolution is achieved. (That's just how these things work.)

So much for the breakthrough. Now for the brick wall. I won't go into too much detail right now, but I discovered a problem. If your story is about a master criminal who executes devious plans, you actually have to think up those devious plans. I don't know how I skipped over that one detail, but until I came up to the moment of the crime, I hadn't considered that neither Ferian nor I had a plan.

Ferian doesn't work that way. He always has a plan, even if it's a bad one.

Therefore, I couldn't go forward. I need to develop my plan, go back and add the necessary threads in place, and work forward to the conclusion I envisioned. (Attentive readers will remember that I mentioned it here.)

One more bit of information before I go--I have a working title for the entire novel: The Recollections of Ferian Fetlock, Honest Merchant. Thoughts?

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3