Image courtesy of zirconicusso at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Oh, no – The Dragon is Coming!!!
On Monday August 21st, a solar eclipse will be visible coast-to-coast. North Carolina will be covered from 1 pm to 4 pm with the height about 2:45
NASA has a website dedicated to Solar Eclipses – find out more about what is coming here: https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/solar.html
Amazon Cover
Coming home from Pennsic, I thought I would do an Author Spotlight on the woman who named the Society for Creative Anachronism while she lived in Berkeley California. When the college-related group of medievalists needed a name to rent a park, Marion Zimmer Bradley came up with the name on the spur of the moment. Her SCA name was Mistress Elfrid of Greenwalls, and she was instrumental in getting branches started in the New York area.
Her most famous work is The Mists of Avalon, and you can see the impact her time with the historical reenactment group had on her writing. Nothing like being able to talk to men and women who actually put on armor to make things more believable. After all, write what you know. As she concentrated on her work, her time in the SCA got less and less. Her other series include Trillium and Darkover. Her impact on the fantasy genre was extensive.
As well on those who live a slice of The Dream in the real world.
Today was a slow, rainy Sunday morning – perfect for snuggling. A day and emotional setting unlike what had driven them together last night and kept them up until the first of the rain hit the tent roof.
Lyle petted Barney’s hair as the watery light shimmered through the nylon canvas. The running will stop soon. He had no idea how far they had run before the car ran out of gas, nor how far they walked after that. Someone would find them.
Today, tomorrow, the next. Until then, he planned to keep Barney as safe as he could. As safe as he should have kept him before they ran.
(words 110 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 5/5/2013 for the 2/19/12 Sunday Fun – The original photo was of unknown copyright so did not put on my site – published on old blog 05/05/2013; republished in new blog format on 8/13/2017)
Image acquired without permission from (multiple) Facebook postings
(but does have grammarly in the image)
Image courtesy of wowspix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Internal and external plot lines apply here at the long-form. Single plot lines go to the short story entrance on the side.
Anything longer than a short story should have multiple plot lines woven together, and even the best short stories have more than one thing happening. The most obvious is an internal emotional journey of the main character, such as coming-of-age, and the external situation needing resolution, for example a killer needing to be found in a mystery. Outside of the internal and external (emotional and action) plot lines, most stories include multiple relationship interactions including family and romance.
Adding additional story lines is easy. Keeping them all advancing and interacting with equal tension is not.
This is where the plotter has the advantage over the pantser. An outline indicates where beats happen, the need to circle back and concentrate on the mystery and allow the romance to take the back burner in the science fiction thriller. A pantser after completing the book often needs to find all the stray plot lines and trim them or weave them in to the story cloth.
One thing you should not do is concentrate on only one part of the story until running out of steam then switching to the next plot. Maybe during the rough draft, just so all the information is on the page. You can’t rewrite until the writing is done. But after the initial writing is finished, the internal and external and relationship plot lines should be integrated. A reader shouldn’t look at a scene and say “this scene was written to advance the emotional growth plot line”.
The only thing a reader should know is they need to read the scene so they can move to the next scene because everything is woven so tightly together the story pulls them from the beginning to the end.
WRITING EXERCISE: For your present work-in-progress (WIP), define all the plot lines occurring.
MY EXAMPLE: In Honestly, the following plot lines are occurring:
1. Internal – Kassandra’s acceptance and adjustment after her breakup. In particular, but not limited to, her sense of self-worth and worth of being loved.
2. Relational – Kassandra’s relationship with her son and their relationship with her ex; adjusting to the new dynamic.
3. Internal (indirect) – Troy’s ability to reveal his physical vulnerability to others.
4. Relational – Development of Troy’s and Kassandra’s relationship, revealing the past and figuring out the future.
5. External – Kassandra’s job situation and balancing her needs of being a parent against the need for income.
6. External – Troy’s physical therapy and injury recovery requirements, his ability to accept them, and the ongoing impacts medically to his life.
7. External (indirect) – Troy’s ongoing job with the military.
Not every plotline in Honestly is fully developed, nor is every plotline directly visible to the reader. Number seven, Troy military job, may have impact in future stories within the universe they come from. Kassandra originally appeared in Light it Up, part of the Atlantis Warden urban fantasy universe.