Finally, A Decision
amber September 23rd, 2008
I’ve been working on character sketches (before working on the full-blown character profile worksheets) for the last few days, having finally come to a decision on a plot. Which plot did I choose, you ask? Well, actually, neither of the previous post’s choices, because I’m irritating like that.
No.34 wrote Oct 2 2007:
A person is found dead; amongst his/her belongings a letter is found which says that if they are ever killed, suspect Main Character, who also happens to be this person’s worst enemy. The main character, however, definitely did not kill this person, despite numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary. See, the person committed suicide as a final act of revenge against the main character, and now it’s up to him, under constant scrutiny by the authorities, to exonerate himself.
Now, I’m not truly following this letter-for-letter, but I’ve got it in my head that I need to do a pretty much straight-up Mystery/Thriller this year… for the life of me, though, I can’t figure out why I feel this need. Mysteries need full-blown plotting and outlining done to really make them work, which I’ve got a bad track record with. I tend to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer, especially when it comes to Nano, but I want to try this, and want to make it worthwhile.
So, I’m working on these character sketches. I’ve got my four main characters (Hero, Heroine, Main Antagonist, and Antagonist/Catalyst - i.e., Dead Gal) with a paragraph for each so far, and I’ve got my basic setting. Once I get the character worksheets completed, I’ll start playing around with Holly Lisle’s Notecarding: Plotting Under Pressure to get my brain wrapped around what I want to happen, then I’ll try working out a pseudo-snowflake method to finish it up. I’m probably over-complicating this process, but I figure more Pre-Nano work the better if I want this to be anything remotely readable at the end of this.
