Hello everyone!
I felt things were moving in the right direction for the outlining this week…for the most part. This week I really focused on having the plot rundown from the main character’s point of view remain with the perspective of the main character. I like having new ideas for the supporting characters, both major, but especially minor, because I think these little details that I can incorporate about them will make the world feel that much more lived in, but there’s a time and a place to focus on them, and waxing on and on about them while I’m supposed to be focusing on the main character isn’t it.
Last week, I had also felt for one section my main character was a little too passive, which in and of itself wasn’t so bad, but I don’t like it when stories are just happening “around” the character, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re even there or not. I usually want my characters to be active in the plot. If they’re not, I want to have a reason for why they’re not. It hit me in the middle of the week how to deal with this. While he still will not be taking an active role in what’s going on around him for this one section, my goal is to now reframe his actions so that he is actively trying remain passive, resisting all of these outside forces dragging him into the action.
I was dog sitting for the weekend, and this definitely did cut into the time I could devote to outlining. Well, okay, it didn’t have to…but I had to play with the dog. Okay…I wanted to play with the dog. What? How can you anyone look at a bored dog and not want to cheer it up?
I had to change my approach of tackling the outline, so my initial focus each day with the dog was to take her on walks until I tuckered her out. I was even cheerily telling her as I was driving her to the park that she was done for because I was going to wear her out. Once she was zonked out on the couch or floor (wherever she gave up and decided to lie down), I get back into the outline, and ended up only missing one day where I didn’t get to it. This may not have had anything to do with it, but I was so pleased with myself for carving out time to outline while the dog was here that I brainstormed a way to really ratchet up the tension for an entire section of the book that I previously hadn’t even thought of.
Lastly, also during the weekend, I woke up in the middle of the night because my neighbors across the street felt like midnight was the perfect time to have a long drawn out conversation, and while I was tossing about (without disturbing the dog) trying to fall back asleep, I thought about how the plan is to have a two year gap between the release of I’m Not My Father and this book, which led me to finally give this project a title. This is still a working title, something I’ve actually ended up doing with all 3 of my published novels. Dig Down was originally going to be Dig Down Deep, and Lock the Doors had a working title of The Intruders (which is why I used that word so often in the story). I’m Not My Father had a working title of Pyrite. So this is subject to change, but for now, I’ll be referring to the new book as Worth the Wait.
Talk to you guys next week.