Pondering A Story Part 3

If you have been following this blog, you’ll remember I’ve been pondering a story using The Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson. In Pondering A Story I attempted step 1. In Pondering A Story Part 2 I attempted step 2. Today’s post may be shorter, but I’m going to attempt step 3.

Step 3 is where we work on discovering who are characters are. Here is a check list taken from Ingermansons’ own website www.advancedfictionwriting.com.

1. The character’s name

2. A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

3. The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

4. The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)

5. The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

6. The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?

7. A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

I’ll admit, when I first looked at this, I thought, “Do what? I can’t do that.”

Turns out, I did. It’s not perfect, and every time I look at my answers, they change. But, below is what I came up with for my story. Note: This is my interpretation. Yours will be different, because you are different.

Character’s name: Mercy Wakefield

1 sentence summary: Mercy Wakefield purchases an indentured servant to help run the farm and ends up falling in love with him.

Motivation: desire to better herself. Make a life without a man.

concrete goal: purchase indentured help rather than marry to make farm work

Conflict: servant looks like husband and doesn’t act like she thought he would, and she falls for him.

Epiphany: trusts him, realizes she can have both love and successful life. 

summary paragraph: Embittered widow, Mercy Wakefield purchases an indentured servant to help her run her farm. He isn’t like her husband, though. He works hard to make farm a success and keeps his word. Then, he breaks a promise, and she is hurt. She gets to lowest point and realizes she can’t do it on her own anymore. Only after she decides to write to late husband’s family for help does she learn servant is brother-in-law. Family arrives from England and servant is cleared of crimes. She must learn to step out in faith and embrace love and life God has for her.

Now, for him

Character’s’ name: Gabriel Wakefield

1 sentence summary: On a search for his twin brother who was kidnapped as a child, Gabriel Wakefield is convicted of a crime and sentenced to seven years in the colonies..

Motivation: love of family, sense of honor, to marry someday and have what parents have, to have brother back and/or know what happened to him.

Character’s goal: find brother or find out what happened, make family whole again

Conflict: accused of crime and sentenced to seven years transportation to colonies, bought by a woman who makes him feel sympathy, gives his word to stay, begins to care for the woman, caught escaping and sentenced to hang

Epiphany: lets God have control, realizes he can’t fix it all. trusts God to fix it

summary paragraph: On a search for his twin brother who was kidnapped as a child, Gabriel Wakefield is convicted of a crime and sentenced to seven years in the colonies.. He promises he won’t escape in exchange for being loosed from his chains. Begins to fall for the woman who purchased him. When he realizes the woman is his sister-in-law, he tries to escape to send a letter home. He is caught and sentenced to hang according to terms of his indenture. At a low point, he turns to God for help. When his family arrives and he is cleared of the charges, he steps out in faith and asks the woman to marry him.

And, y’all, that’s it. Yep, that is step 3. What is crazy, is I actually think I have the bones of a real good story, here. Right now, it looks like this story line will work.

Disclaimer; I’m going on 3 hours of sleep and very little food, because I was too busy to eat today. LOL Too busy on purpose. It’s called, editing a 109,000 manuscript. Ha! That’s right. The WIP I’ve been working on is written. Ready for you to read? Not so much. :) Let the hours of editing continue and the word smithing begin. A writer’s life is nothing if not interesting.

Your challenge: Go work on your own story idea. Go to Ingermanson’s site and check out his method for yourself. Above all, have fun and give God the glory.

Be sure to come back next week when I will attempt step 4 in the snowflake method.

Happy Tuesday and be blessed. 

Pondering A Story Part 2

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the blog. Last week I talked about using the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson to begin a story. If you missed last week’s post, you can go read it here. This week, I would like to take that one step further.

First, I wrote a summary sentence. To recap from last week, here is what I wrote.

Hardhearted widow purchases indentured servant newly arrived to the American colonies.

The next step is to  take that sentence and write a paragraph that goes into more detail. After a week of searching the internet and playing around with a few ideas, here’s what I came up with.

Widow, Mercy Wakefield is bitter. Her husband made promises that he never kept. Now she is left with the farm and no one to help work it. When a ship arrives with convicts from England, she believes she has an answer to her dilemma. Trouble is one of them just might be her dead husband.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that grabs my attention. How could it be her husband, if her husband is dead?

My paragraph is a good one. However, I’m forgetting about my hero.

Gabriel Wakefield is searching for his twin brother who was taken from him when they were young. He is in London when he is convicted of highway robbery and sentenced to transportation to the American colonies for seven years. His indenture is purchased by a sharp-tongued slip of a woman, and Gabriel finds himself giving his word that he will not try to escape in exchange for having his chains removed. In an attempt to find a way to send a letter home, he breaks his promise and escapes, only to learn the lady he is working for is his sister-in-law. When his innocence and his brother’s death are proven, Gabriel is free to act upon the attraction he feels for the woman who purchased his indenture.

According to Ingermanson, the next step in writing a paragraph is to tell the story. Story set-up, major disasters and end of the novel should be in that paragraph. So, let me see if I can do that.

Embittered widow, Mercy Wakefield purchases an indentured servant to help her run her farm. When a ship arrives with convicts from England, she believes she has an answer to her dilemma. Trouble is one of them just might be her dead husband. On a mission to find his long lost brother, Joshua, lord Gabriel Wakefield, second son of an earl is accused of highway robbery and sentenced to transportation to the American colonies for seven years. His indenture is purchased by a sharp-tongued slip of a woman, and Gabriel finds himself giving his word that he will not try to escape in exchange for having his chains removed. Expecting her servant to b like her late husband, Mercy is surprised when he keeps his word and works hard to bring in the harvest and improve the farm. Hoping to send a letter home to ask his family for help, Gabriel breaks his promise and escapes. Only after he is caught and punished by the law does he  realize Mercy is his sister-in-law. Hurt and angry, Mercy sends a letter to her late husband’s family to ask for help and ignores her growing attraction for Gabriel. When Gabriel’s family arrive with proof of his innocence, all are faced with the realization that Joshua Wakefield was the one who committed the crime. With his sentence revoked, Gabriel assumes his brother’s title of Viscount and heir apparent to his father’s earldom and asks Mercy to be his wife.

So, what do you think? This paragraph is not perfect, and I’m glad it isn’t set in stone. Already, I’m seeing holes in it, but I do think it is a good start. Ideally, Ingermanson says this paragraph should be 5 sentences, but as you can see, I haven’t narrowed it down that far, yet. However, both the paragraph for Mercy and the one for Gabriel are each five sentences long, which works for me, for now. See why we writers call our stories works in progress? :)

I know for those of you who aren’t writers, it sounds like I’m repeating myself, but I wanted to give you an idea how the writing process works. For those of you who are writers, I wanted you to know that all stories start out bad. LOL Keep in mind, too, I’m trying something new. I have never outlined a story with the intent of writing it. Time will tell if this one works out. I think it will, though. I can’t get these characters out of my head. I just need to research them more fully. I’m thinking late 1600’s or early 1700’s, which means learning how they spoke, dressed and thought  in colonial America. If some of my characters are titled peers of the realm, I’ll need to learn how that works, too.

I have read several stories about men buying women servants and falling in love, but I have only read one other story where the woman purchases a man. I like to mix things up and see what happens. In one secular romance book, the woman is weak and doesn’t know how to be anything but an aristocratic lady, while the man is a ship builder. So, what if my heroine knows how to work the fields and care for animals? What if she must make hard decisions, like whether or not to have her servant punished for running away?  What if our son of an earl had to eat some humble pie? What if she teaches him how to have fun? Getting into the Christian aspects of it, what if our hero’s Christ-like attitude taught our heroine a thing or two about forgiveness, trustworthiness and faith?

FYI, because story puzzles don’t leave me quickly, I have already written a few small scenes with these characters. Twice over the weekend, conversation popped in my head, and I had to go write it down before I forgot. No real action around the dialog, except what scenes I picture in my head, but at least I was able to sleep without dreaming of Mercy and Gabe. :)

Thanks for being with me as I share this new adventure. Pray for me and this story, when you think of it, and please don’t steal my characters’ names. Catch you next week, when we will examine step 3 in the snowflake method. Between now and then, remember to smile, because Jesus loves you.

If you like my blog and want more, I’m also blogging at adkinsandwells.blogspot.com. To learn more about Randy Ingermanson and his Snowflake method, visit his website.

Be blessed.

Pondering A Story

Thirty minutes before I herd the children off to bed, and I just realized I haven’t written a blog post. So, it’s off the cuff tonight. I can’t promise I’ll stay on topic. In fact, here at the beginning, there is no clear topic. I’ll come up with one before its over, though, so stick with me.

Randy Ingermanson is the author of the snowflake method. He is a fiction writer, as well. You can find him at advancedfictionwriting.com. I was playing online when I came across his website, and his take on how to begin a novel intrigued me. “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe when I’m ready to write the next book, I’ll try his method out.” Before we go any further, let me make sure you understand, I write when the mood strikes me. If characters and scenes don’t come to me, I don’t force them. This works if writing is a hobby. I want to do better and possibly make writing a career. So, I need to figure out how to write a book that doesn’t take four to five years. His method might be something for me. Time will tell.

The first suggestion he gives is to come up with a summary sentence. I’ve been playing around with a few ideas and characters, and here’s my first try.

Hardhearted widow purchases indentured servant newly arrived to the American colonies.

What do you think? Grab your attention?

The next step is to write a paragraph with more information about that sentence, but I’m not there, yet. The actual snowflake method on the website is meant for those who can see, but I like his suggestions. If nothing else, it gives my mind time to play while ideas for my current WIP come to fruition. Also helps while the temps fall and the wind picks up outside. Very glad my part of WV is on the outer edges of the snowstorm further East.

Speaking of colonial America, I just finished reading “Caleb’s Crossing” by Geraldine Brooks. Could not put it down. Excellent writing. The book did not end as I thought it would, but it made me cry just the same. It mentioned some rather interesting customs that I plan to research. Confessing sin in front of the entire congregation was one of them. Yikes!

Yesterday and today were spent homeschooling and searching the internet. From strange marriage laws to prison hulks, indentured servants to convicts sent to American colonies, ideas began to form. I realized that on paper history is one thing; in reality the lives of folks were probably quite different. I read of men stealing handkerchiefs and being sent to Maryland from England for a seven year sentence, but what would make a person want a handkerchief that bad? What about those who were framed for a crime they didn’t commit? People aren’t usually what they seem, and this pondering is what makes good stories.

Example:

What if our hardhearted widow is named Mercy? Hardhearted widow, Mercy Wakefield trusts no one, especially men. Now, what if our indentured servant is a convict sentenced to seven years in the colonies. Hang on, y’all, I think I just came up with a story question.

How could a convict teach her about grace?

These thoughts are scattered, and it is growing late. Time for a recharge. :) But, since this is turning into a series, here is the link to part 2 on this theme.
http://sjwellsauthor.blogspot.com/2017/03/pondering-story-part-2.html

Be blessed and keep warm.

Readin', Writin' and Surviving the Dentist's Drill

Last week I looked at the manuscript I am working on and felt overwhelmed. Two stories in one, over 106,000 words, it’s a bear to wrestle with, and I just wanted to set it aside and take a nap. So, that’s what I did…sort of. I shut my mac book down last Thursday evening, grabbed an old book I had downloaded on my phone and did very little on Friday except read. On Saturday, I went out with my husband, but while at home, I read. No computer. Sunday morning I turned it on for a few minutes to glance at blog stats on my other blog. Then, on a whim, I opened the story and looked over it. You know what? It’s not quite as scary-looking as it was Thursday evening. In fact, a few thousand words got deleted on purpose. Yesterday while eating ice cream for breakfast and prayerfully gearing myself up to go to the dentist to have some teeth worked on, I felt the Lord telling me, “All the story is there. You just need to sew it together so it makes sense to everyone else.” :)

I often tell friends my stories are like puzzles; once all the scenes are written, I just have to figure out where they go to make a picture. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but it might be the same way with this monster of a story. Some would have us to believe that fiction has strict rules that must be followed. Since I’ve never been one to follow directions, I’m going to stop worrying about those rules and put down the story as it slides from my fingertips. Editing can be done later. In the meantime, old, familiar books can be enjoyed with no feelings of guilt. I’m studying my craft after all.

So, here we are today. It’s raining in my part of rural WV, and we’re attempting to get some school work done. I’m chilled and thinking about another cup of coffee. The laundry is going, and the dentist visit from yesterday is behind me. Oh, that “tzeeeeert-tzeeeeert” of the drill is fading from my memory, and the adrenalin rush is long gone. I did learn something while in the dentist’s chair, though. Singing a song to yourself while he is drilling away the decay in your teeth helps to make the time go faster. Also learned something else, yesterday while eating out with my girls and my aunt. Keeping napkins handy when your mouth is numb is a good idea. If you don’t, you could end up wearing your lunch. LOL

Happy Tuesday, y’all.