Monthly Archives: October 2009

I was running into problems with consistency with a few of my infrequent characters in Passages of Consequence: The Open Door, so I created this cheat sheet.  While not detailed enough for main characters, this is a good, rough, one-page sketch for working with minor or infrequent characters.  So far it seems to work fairly well for me.  Use at will and, if you get a chance, tell me how it works for you.

Character Sketch PDF

It’s been a little while since I last wrote.  I have been focused on finishing my second book by Veterans Day.  I already have a team of readers combing through the opening chapters and I want to have editing done by Thanksgiving.  I was put on this path from the Central California Writers’ Conference at Cuesta College (Oct. 2-3).

Passages of Consequence: The Open Door was about 1/3 done before the conference, but work on it had stalled.  I was having problems with how I wanted to approach different scenes.  My outline followed two parallel stories, related stories that did not intersect, that of a hostage and a target.  From both angles, you get to know the assassins and, well, they’re the interesting part – this is SciFi after all.  That outline just hit the shred-and-recycle pile. 

Based on conversations at the conference, my storyline has been trimmed down, the timeline flattened, and the best two-part chase scene ever written (not that I am biased) re-imagined.  I threw out 32 of my 88 original pages, demoted the target from a major to barely-there character, and stitched up some of the holes.

Now I’m working toward my ambitious goal of 11/11.  I have had this goal since the evening of Tuesday, the 10/6 – driving home from an FSFW meeting.  Thursday night I finished my new outline and corresponding milestones.  By the end of Friday, I was already behind.  The three-day weekend brought me back to where I thought I should be, but I have since fallen behind again.  Long nights are coming.

If my posts don’t appear as often as they did in late summer, it is because I am putting pen to paper.  I hope to get up a post a week.