Tag Archives: Plot

Jake and the Knight update

I’m now about half way through Jake and the Knight Who wasn’t there – so the detailed synopsis method seems to be working quite well at the moment. I feel I am pretty much sticking to the story as I envisioned it, with some deviations and deepenings of character and setting of course, but the basic plot is hanging together well. I think by having a detailed plan to refer to, even with a short story, it enables you to make sure you build the character and the setting in the right way, so that the reader believes the resolution of the story. So in my planning of this story, I have made sure to make a note of how Jake should react to certain things, or where he should reflect on something and what he thinks as well, as later on he’s going to act in a certain way that the reader will have to take on trust.

In the past I think I’ve perhaps not let my characters reflect too much – perhaps I have tried to show in actions and dialogue a bit too much and only build character in this way, but this time I’m taking a bit more time to build up the importance of the narrative voice, but still balancing that with action and dialogue to keep the story exciting and to build conflict.

Hopefully will have a first draft done before Christmas!

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Habit for Killing Morphing Again

I haven’t posted for a while as I have been concentrating on some major changes to Habit for Killing. In fact the story has changed completely from a medieval mystery to a full-on fantasy set in the historical 14th century. 

I’ll provide some more details once I have got a bit further with the plot. 
In my latest attempts at plotting I have found that looking at listing all the issues at stake for the characters a useful method. So for instance what possible events could happen that make things harder for the lead characters and increase the stake they have in the story. After brainstorming this list I then put them in order of magnitude, so the more minor events first building up to events that increase the pressure on the characters the most. An this pretty much gave me the plot for the second act of the book. 
This tip came from Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell. 
Another tip of his that I used was, as this was now more of a thriller, to look at creating a knock-out ending before working much of the rest of the plot. I think I have a really stunning ending now, that the rest of the plot can work towards. Whereas when I was planning to write a mystery, how the mystery was uncovered was in many ways more important than the ending.