Now what?

At the moment I had this to work with.

The Heroine

The Love Interest

Who ever this turns out to be

A place

and...

A Genre

So who's the villain? Well, I found one, but that would be a spoiler, so I'm leaving it out of this blog. =P

All that was left was to figure out the story. What kind of story would this girl be a part off, willingly or otherwise? So I sat down and made a "why, what, when, who and how" list. 

It took me a little over a week to get all the kinks worked out, but this is where I like to spend the most time. Thinking up the improbable, and sometimes even the impossible. I've struggled with this part before. Having my brain go "That's not logical, that would never happen", or more often than not "That sucks, you suck, stop trying". I encurage anyone who runs into this mind troll to take it out back and shoot it. Point blank in the head. It might take a few tries, but if you start every writing session by closing your eyes and picturing it in your head, vividly, you will eventually put that troll to rest. This list should never bend to any laws, or rules. This list should be the beast you let out of a cage just before a feeding frenzy. Go on, shove some chocolate tasting, alligator looking unicorns into that beast's tentacle and watch it grow. 

Then I wrote a quick summary using the picture below as a guide. Putting the most weight in the middle section. The second act, for me, is always the hardest. Mostly becasue it needs so much action. I'm not talking about bang bang action, I mean the climb, the constant escalating towards the climax. So I crammed as much of my ideas into the middle as I could, and then some more. Knowing the summary will change as the story grows on paper, I refused to hold back. 

After that was done I took a well needed break. Finding short stories in the mystery genre to read, to get better acquainted with the new genre. This is just as important as writing for me. If I don't read, I don't write. There are writers out there (one of my favorite as an example) who hasn't read any books outside of school. She's written over 150 books and I've loved almost every one of them, so the read to write thing is a very personal preference.

In my next post I'll show you how I started putting my work into Word, and how I, by changing my way of writing, keep myself from getting bored. 

- Izzy