Outlining I Killed Them, Mama

I have gotten tired of floundering around in the plot, so I have taken a couple of days and been working on the outline.

The book has changed quite a bit over the last two days.

For example, when I was lamenting that it might not be long enough to be an actual novel a sister suggested that I use the diary entries as intros into each new development. From there I could slip into third party perspective and show, rather than tell, what was going on.  

Here is the first bit of my outline for I Killed Them, Mama:

1. Amelia May Green is now Mrs. Lawrence.
   1. Describe the wedding a little bit.
   2. Say how she doesn’t understand why her mother was so concerned about her future if she followed family tradition and allowed her father to select her husband.
   3. Also explain that she is starting this diary “Since you left a journal of your life for me to read, I have started one for my future children.”
2. Back from the honeymoon.
   1. Describe the trip in a paragraph or two.
   2. Then moving into the house.
   3. They decide to wait a few months before trying for kids.
3. He’s starting to get rude and a bit verbally abusive. She thinks it’s just about something going on at work, and tries to keep him happy at home by making extra yummy dinners.
4. He hits her.
   1. She is confused.
   2. When she goes shopping no one seems to notice the bruise and split lip.
5. It’s been two weeks and he’s hit her a couple more times, also over stupid little things.
   1. She is not lying down and taking this.
   2. She tries to talk to her father about the abuse, but he just asks her what she did to provoke him.
   3. She tells her father-in-law (from now on it’s FIL), and he just treats it like it’s part of marriage.
   4. She goes to the family attorney and he says that it’s typical to the first few months of every marriage.
   5. She’s not convinced.
6. It’s been another week and he’s hit her twice more.
   1. She goes to the police, and the sergeant won’t even look her in the eye when he tells her there’s nothing they can do.
   2. She’s starting to realize that the rumors of her new ‘family’ having the town under its thumb are not without merit.
   3. She decides that the people involved in getting her into this situation must die. It’s just a matter of how.
   4. FIL must have talked with hubby because now he’s hitting her in places that don’t easily show.

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How many of you have written a story or book off an outline?

Was it easier or harder than flying by the seat of your pants?

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If you would like to see the other posts about this book you can peruse through these:

My First NaNoWriMo Word Count

Latest NaNoWriMo Word Count, And A Synopsis

Word Count And Excerpt

Who Knew?

A Second Excerpt from I Killed Them, Mama

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Slow Going

    Yesterday I added 2015 words to my romantic/suspense novel.  At least I hope it’s going to be long enough to be called a novel.  I keep adding words, but it still doesn’t seem that it’s going to end up having a high enough word count to rate above a novella.  Fingers crossed.

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In other news:

• Almost everyone in my sphere is sick…again, including half my family.  I can’t tell if I’m also getting sick, or if this is a result of my falling off my bossy hypoglycemia diet.
• I wrote a poem that would be perfect for either my book of coffee poems or my book of kitchen poems.  Trying to decide which way to go.  Thinking I’ll wait for a couple more poems and see which subject takes the lead.
• I’m starting to feel some cabin fever.  Not because I never go anywhere, because it’s so cold outside that I can’t take walks, or do anything else outside really.  Wishing we’d finished the greenhouse this past fall. 

Sooooo…

How is your winter going?  Are you getting itchy for spring?  (I can’t wait for gardening, walks, going to the park and swinging on the swings, picnics, and oh so many other outdoor activities.)

If you are a writer, how has your writing been going?  (You don’t have to give me details. Ex. Good, bad, slow, “Dude! I totally just finished the trilogy I started two months ago.)

 

Reblog – First Draft Composition: A Focused, Directed Vision is a MUST

I read this post when it first came out, but it’s like I’m reading it again for the first time. Mostly because it’s exactly what I need to hear right now. I’m kind of panicking over writing a larger part for a small character in this romantic/suspence, when all I really have to do is add a couple diary entries to what I’ve already written. Why does the brain have to make this stuff so difficult?!?

So, for the next couple of writing sessions I am going to do my best to just concentrate on the next few words, instead of the entire darn book.

• Do you need to narrow your view of your current work in progress?
• Have you been spending too much time thinking about your novel as a whole rather than how you’re going to draft your current scene?

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Creative Writing with the Crimson League

If you’ve been following my posts this week–especially those of the last two days–especially yesterday’s, The Post NaNoWriMo drag, and a previous one about inspiration not striking as I’d like–then you know I’m struggling to make progress as I try to wrap up a first draft I’m working on, the first one in a new series about my fantasy world of Herezoth. I’m just feeling overwhelmed by all the directions and possibilities, and I’ve noticed a pattern to my panickings/uncertainties:

• Where do I take the next book? I have a particularly couple, the princess and a guardsman, I’m trying to bring together but it doesn’t seem entirely feasible and I have no clue how their storyline is going to end. And never mind Herezoth’s war with Esclavay! Do I have one kingdom invade the other? Keep battle maritime? I know NOTHING about warships/sea battles! I’d have to do so…

View original post 456 more words

A Second Excerpt from I Killed Them, Mama

I got another 1,103 words done today.  It took me a slightly demoralizing two hours.  I am, however, consoled by the fact that those thousand words were in several different places in the book.

I have decided to post another excerpt.  This part was written during the mad dash that was November and NaNoWriMo.  It has not really been edited, and it most likely will change at least a bit before everything is said and done.

Without further ado, an excerpt from my romantic/suspense work-in-progress: I Killed Them, Mama…

Dear Mama,

Your granddaughter is growing well.  My doctor congratulated me on taking such good care of my pregnant self through such a tragic time.  It was so hard not to laugh right in her face.  The longer I have to put up with this, the more I think I should move away from here.  Can’t yet, though.  Hubby still isn’t in the ground.  That’s tomorrow. 

His family, being actually useful for once, has stepped in and are taking care of all the arrangements.  They don’t know about the life insurance money that I’ll be getting in a few days, so they’ve also footed the bill.  His female relatives are taking care of the food, and decorating his Aunt Alvera’s house for the reception after the grave side service.  And I won’t even have to do any driving.  They have hired a car and driver for me for the entire day.  One of the few good things about a family who’s more concerned with how they appear than with how they actually act.  But, at least I will be able to leave the reception early, pleading tiredness and a headache.

Heaven forbid anything happen to their little bun in my oven.  They are already talking about which five-year-old boy she should marry.  This family is nuts. 

 

 

Dear Mama,

It was difficult, but I survived the funeral and reception.  So many people came!  That grave side felt like a flash mob had attacked.  The house was full to bursting.  I didn’t have to pretend to have a headache, I got a migraine.  What really did me is was all the different smells.  Everyone, it seemed had on the most obnoxious perfumes and aftershaves imaginable.  The personal care scents mixed with aroma of too many people, then met so many food smells I thought I was going to hurl. 

What sealed the deal is when His cousin Len tried to cop a feel.  The stench of tequila on his breath turned my stomach so fast I didn’t have time to go anywhere.  So he got it.  All down his front.  Oh, the luxuries of being pregnant.

The scream he let out is what really got us the attention of the entire room.  I haven’t heard a shriek like that since the last time I watched The Blob. 

He got hustled out of the room by his father, I got gently led to the nearest bathroom, and some random female relative cleaned up the mess.  By the time I was tenderly re-seated in the large drawing room it didn’t even smell like puke anymore.  It smelled like cigar.  One whiff of that on top of all the others and I asked for my coat.

For other info, and another excerpt from I Killed Them, Mama, please read this post, and then this post.

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Until Next Time…

If you were forced to write a suspense novel (assuming you don’t have one bursting to be written) what do you think you would make it about?

Do you enjoy reading light suspense (with a touch of humor, some romance in the second half, and a happy ending, ah-hehm)?  Do you know of any authors who have written books like this?  I would love to read them.

Who’s your favorite suspense novelist?

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Does Anyone Else…?

Ah…2013. 

Crap, crap, crap!

Does anyone else look at their to do list for the year and just want to go back to bed?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for this new year and all its possibilities.  It’s just that, well, I set kind of public goals for myself and I’m falling behind.  Normally this is the part where I put things back onto the shelf and mutter something to the effect of “Well, I tried.”  But since I have told people, people who will be checking back to see if I actually got things done (such as the friend of a friend who kindly offered to do the editing), I will have to find a way to get past this overwhelmed feeling and crawl to the finish line.

I don’t want to feel this way.  I want to be super jazzed again, shouting from the rooftops that I have a book idea that will make it to the big time, ecstatically announcing every fresh page as it’s composed.  How, though, will I get back there?

This is not a rhetorical question, I really am stumped as to how I’m going to get the spark back into my writing engine.  Should I dangle a reward in front of myself for every couple pages?  Maybe turning my speech-to-text program back on and playing with it like a child with a new toy?  Would it help if I wrote with pen and paper for a couple days?

I don’t know.  I’ll have to find something, however, because according to my schedule I should have finished with my first draft almost two weeks ago.  Unless something drastic happens the release date for my novel will have to be pushed back a couple of months.  That would be the realistic approach.  Who wants to be realistic?  I’m going to be awesome!  This is Awesome Rose saying I will, I will get this done!  Some how, this book will be finished.  Some way I will get my zing back.  I will find a way to have a stellar writing career, so that I can make stellar money, and make and raise stellar kids.

(But for the moment I am going to focus on short term goals.  Otherwise I’d give myself a complex thinking of all the things I have mentally pinned to this one big project.)

(We do have other projects in the works to make money.  It’s just that for some reason my brain has me convinced that this one has the most riding on it.  Way to stress me out, Brain.)

Other things I must get done soon:

• Finish a website for a special project
• Read several books that are waiting to be reviewed
• Get some more creative work done on My Ignored Hamper, and Other Bathroom Poetry
• Start working on my next book of poetry — it’s about coffee!
• Help finish several projects around the house (I’m tired of living in a construction zone!)
• Reorganize my bedroom
• Put together a costume for my birthday party

That’s just a general overview of things I’d like to get done in the next couple weeks.  Wish me luck!

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Until Next Time…

Much like Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbs) when he has an atrocious case of the hiccups, I am wide open to writing advice from pros, or anyone with a plausible idea, really.

How do you stay creative through a large project?

Or, how do you get your zing back after losing the pep in your creative step?

(For an excerpt of my romantic suspense, I Killed Them, Mama as it currently stands, click Here.  A synopsis is Here.)

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