EditingAlley.com

I'm reading some of my subscribed articles in Substack, and thought this guy is asking the right questions. Can I do this?

Quotes from Story Club, The 1200 page elephant:

"See if you can say it in a few quick sentences. Try to avoid justifying parts of the text (“I need Chapter 4 to establish Vance as a selfish person”) and just….tell it. Tell it in a way that emphasizes causality. (“Because Vance was a selfish person, he stole all of his new wife’s jewelry and pawned it.”) Find the line through it that feels most mythic and human and elemental – the version you’d blurt out to the person sitting next to you on a plane who just asked you what your book was about.

What are the five or six main events that propel the story forward?

What are the “rules” by which your book moves between time periods?

Why, in each case, is the story improved or bolstered by that move?"

I think about these questions as I take a break from the computer today and go raise my bum leg in the recliner. I call it my "think chair" because I'm relaxed there and I can stare out the big livingroom windows, watch the trees sway with the breeze, the squirrels trapse around the limbs, sometimes purposely aggravating the dogs, watch the cat carouse nimbly across the top of the wood fencing, ignoring the dogs barking at the squirrels because the cat wants the squirrels too, the clouds lazily float across a gray sky (today, storms, wind, some rain).

Do I have a line that runs through my story? My goal right now is just finishing a rough first draft. I'm building my storyline as I go. I know fairly well what the POV main character needs, wants, and gets regardless. It's almost become like a fairy tale with a warning. Each main character has this "need, want, but gets" that ends up like a fairytale. He wanted X but his greed needed Y, but he got Z as a result of .... whatever. You get my drift.

I should write down my book's rules. I plan on writing more books in the same verse as this one, so I need the rules, so I'll know when to break them, or not.

And with each scene, when I'm editing, I ask if it makes the story better -- more exciting, more mysterious, more romantic, more something -- before I move to the next scene. I try to label each and every scene as accomplishing (at least) ONE emotional goal -- excitement, curiosity, fear, whatever -- and at least ONE character building goal (or character revealing I should say) perhaps a flaw, or a new found courage, which reminds me of the Cowardly Lion in a way.

Well, you get my drift. Thinking is on the agenda for a couple of hours, with a lot of note taking, or note speaking, and then, a little free time with my K drama (today, "Stranger," a cop/prosecutor/murder mystery).

I'm also hoping my "work" remains very light like this week. Gives me more free time. And OK I'm off to think.

How do you achieve your scene goals? And story goals? (with a lot of caffeine for me!)