Plotting: New-Fangled Note Cards

It occurred to me as I was writing away on the new beginning to Thin Spots that I still had a lot of holes in the plot. Big ones, like a decent ending. I mean, I had one, but it just kind of lay there, you know?

Also, I’ve been reading Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris, which has some dandy tips of filling in plot crevasses and that inspired me to give the story another look. I haven’t finished NYN yet, but since it goaded me into doing something, it must have something going for it; I’ll let you have my final word when I’m finished reading it. (No doubt you’ll all be waiting breathlessly for that.)

Planning, while it’s fun, is nowhere near as fun as writing is. I keep getting pulled off the planning task by the compulsion to write scenes one after another, to get on with it. The problem is, that’s what I’ve tried before and I’ve always written myself into a dead end that way.

So, how to make planning fun enough to keep me from jumping into the writing work? Buy a new toy, of course. If you’re a nerd like me you buy a new piece of software.

In this case I bought myself a license for SuperNoteCard, which enables you to create stacks of virtual index cards on the PC or Mac. You can create multiple decks, categories, cards, relationships between deck and cards and relationships between relationships. You can color-code and annotate. You can distinguish specific “Factors” in your story, factors being people, places and things that “factor” into your story. You can plan your head off with this thing!

I created all my cards from existing materials and came up with nearly three hundred, counting all the duplicates. That exercise alone was enough to help me see I was building the fiction equivalent of spaghetti code (software code with logic that twists and turns on itself like a pile of spaghetti noodles). Now that I’m able to step back and look at the thing from a higher level, through the cards, I’m better able to trim fat and organize the story. At least that’s the way it appears at the moment.

That’s it from the trenches for now. Here’s a picture of SuperNoteCard in action:

“Thin Spots” Character Sketches: Gloriana Jackson Park

I need a shaman and I read that in Ecuador women are considered to have greater shamanic powers than men, so I came up with Gloriana. This sketch is all telling, no showing, because I was really having to work hard to define her.

Gloriana Jackson Park stepped out of her hut and took a deep breath of the rain-fresh air. The daily downpour had just cleared and the birds and monkeys were loud in the treetops again, filling her glen with chattering and song. Higher on the ridge and to the north a waterfall crashed over a cliff face into a broad stream that flowed to the Amazon.

She did her usual afternoon tasks, checking the food supplies for rot or infestations of insects, cutting away vines and other vegetation that daily attempted to overrun her little home, tended her patch of yams and her two pigs, Bacon and Loin. Bacon was getting big; he would be an ex-pig pretty soon.

The chores took up most of the remaining daylight. As the shadows began to lengthen, she poured herself a cup of banana beer, lit a candle on her porch and sat down in a hand-made chair to wait for customers. As the beer warmed her blood she felt a great sense of contentment. It was good to live alone and to do it in the rainforest of beautiful Ecuador, her adopted homeland.

It had been clear from birth which of her parents Gloriana too after: her mother, Gloriana Jackson, who had at one time or another been an artist’s model in Nice, a supporting actress in B-movies, a bush pilot and the pastry chef at a notorious, high-class bordello, where she had turned out cakes representing every body part imaginable along with a surprising number of ordinary glazed doughnuts. The elder Gloriana had settled down, married and had a family for two reasons: one, she was tired; two, it was one of the few things she hadn’t already tried.

Kyong Park, or just Mr. Park, as he insisted the family call him after the night Gloriana the Elder had pantsed him in the airport and Gloriana Jr. had laughed and he’d decided he needed more respect from those who depended on his financial support, was an operating room nurse. He was a man who thrived on order and who often wondered why he had married his high-flying wife, but then the sunlight would catch her abundant brassy curls flying every which-way in the wind, or she would whisper to him in that husky voice of hers and he would remember. She brought a little much-needed chaos into his world of propriety.

Mr. Park’s tolerance of chaos was zero, however, when it came to his little Glo. She was the apple of his eye and he wanted her to have every success, and that meant sacrificing everything fun. While other children played outside, little Glo did her homework a second or third time and completed the extra lessons her father assigned. Her physical recreation was limited to taekwondo classes three times a week. While other girls went on dates, little Glo stayed home practicing viola and piano and learning computer programming languages. When other girls went off to co-ed colleges where they could go to parties and have boyfriends, little Glo was sent to a Baptist institution where all dates were chaperoned and anything beyond kissing on the cheek required an act of Congress.

Thanks to her mother, young Gloriana’s life was not completely bleak. On the contrary, because Mr. Park couldn’t be watching her all the time, little Glo, with the help of her mom, learned the joys of Sneaking Around on the Old Man. Many extra-homework times were spent shopping, having ice cream, or bungee jumping. Educational mother-daughter field trips often ended with Glo at a sleepover and Gloriana soaking in a spa tub at the Hilton. So, although there were fences thrown up all around her, Glo got to develop her wild side.

Unfortunately, from Glo’s perspective, there was nothing her mother could do about the college. Mr. Park insisted it was his daughter’s only option, unless she wanted to move out of the house and go out on her own immediately, with just the clothes on her back. Gloriana the Elder, who knew how important college was, told her daughter to do it for her father, who loved her so much, and reminded her that she could always Sneak Around.

And so Gloriana Jackson Park went to the Baptist college for four years, majored in pre-med and became class valedictorian. Upon graduation, an aunt gave her a large cash gift to help her get started in life. Two months later, Gloriana, after an emotional farewell with her parents, boarded a plane with this cash gift, supposedly to begin training in a prestigious west coast medical program. Instead, she changed routes in Atlanta. Her destination: adventure.

Adventure, it turned out, was a much harsher mistress than Gloriana had bargained for. It chewed her up and spit her out, in the process souring her on the thrills the big world could offer. Seeking something deeper, she took herself to a Buddhist nunnery in the forests of Thailand. There she drank deeply from the fountains of ancient wisdom and meditation, but enlightenment eluded her. Try as she might, she was unable to achieve the free and easy state of equanimity she saw in so many of her fellow nuns.

And then she tried mushrooms.

One night, in a fit of frustration, Gloriana had put on her old jeans and a t-shirt and gone out to get drunk in the nearest village. At the pub there she had met a fellow American, an English-language teacher in Bangkok, out seeing the country. He was attractive enough and she was drunk enough and it had been any number of months, so in short order Gloriana found herself in bed with the guy, whose name she never could remember, howling at the moon. After their second round he had offered her a handful of desiccated mushrooms, saying simply, “Try these.”

Enlightenment followed soon thereafter. She saw the oneness of everything as plainly as the words on the page of a children’s picture book. She saw her path, as well. Not for Gloriana the sedate life of work and meditation—that had been her mistake; it was alien to her nature. She was built for spiritual ecstasy and she would seek it out the world over. She would become the world’s leading practitioner and authority.

Her search brought her to Ecuador, first to the urban shamans and then to the rain forest and the Indians who lived there. Here, for the first time, she became another creature. She took on the body of a black panther and prowled the forest floor. She became a sloth and climbed slowly in the treetops. She became a bird and soared above the canopy. Indians from all the tribes stood in awe of her. They taught her everything they knew of shamanic lore and Gloriana, with the knowledge gained on her global travels and studies, took it further.

It was in the quiet of the upper forest she felt closest to the motive spirit of the universe, and so she moved there, to live alone in contemplation, eking out a meager living by subsistence farming and providing her shamanic services to all who needed her help.

“Thin Spots” Character Sketches: Romantic Interest

Until I wrote this sketch, I had no idea Adrasteia, healer, priestess of ancient Greece and Hell-resident, was such a survivor or risk-taker. This small amount of work has really helped to round her out. I just hope she’ll still be willing to fall in love with Colin, the lead!

Adrasteia mounted the steps to the palace with a reluctant gait, wondering what she’d be asked to do this time. Sometimes her task would be to simply listen to Her Lord’s ravings and nod her head in agreement to everything; other times he would force her to commit multiple perversions to satisfy his jaded, violent tastes. Worst of all were the times he asked her to spy or betray or both for him; these were the things that ripped fresh tears in her already threadbare soul. But it wasn’t worth even thinking about, she reminded herself. He was Lord Satan, and she had no choice but to obey him.

The hall was empty when she arrived. Not even the great throne was there; the only furniture was a pair of armchairs with a small table between them. It was a most un-satanic arrangement and she wondered what the dark one was up to now.

“Great Asclepius,” she whispered, “if there is healing to do here, let me do it; if not, grant me your protection and the protection of your father Apollo, that I might be kept safe to heal another day.”

She was not sure if her prayers could be heard from the depths of Hell, or indeed if Asclepius or Apollo still existed to hear them, so long had it been since an answer had come to her, but she held stubbornly to the practice. If nothing else, it gave her strength to get through the string of awful moments that was life in the abyss.

Sighing, Adrasteia knelt on the stone floor before the armchairs to wait. As she settled in, she noticed a narrow drawer set in the table. Long experience had taught her never to let an opportunity pass to investigate anything that might offer a tool for comfort or survival. Hell, for all its power, was not a tight ship, and anything could have been left in the drawer. After looking carefully in all directions for observers, she tiptoed over to the table and pulled on the drawer handle. The drawer stuck, and then scraped open, warped wood squeaking against warped wood.

She looked around again, heart in her mouth, waiting for some minion to jump out at her, crying foul, but there was none. Only when she felt reasonably safe did she look into the drawer.

There wasn’t much there—just a length of cotton string and a wadded-up bit of parchment—but she took them both and tucked them into a fold of her toga. The strangest things could turn out to be handy in Hell, and she never missed an opportunity to add to the collection hidden away in her chamber. Adrasteia pushed on the drawer to shut it. It stuck. She shook it and tried again—still no movement. She banged on it with her small fists, but it stayed fast.

Footsteps, echoing and metallic, were coming toward the throne room—His Lordship. Adrasteia grasped the drawer pull in both hands and shook the drawer until the whole table lifted off the floor and banged back down. Suddenly, the drawer shot back into place with such force that it nearly capsized the table and took Adrasteia with it. She pulled a muscle in her back bringing everything back into balance and righting the table. She resumed her place on the floor, chest heaving, an eyeblink before Lord Satan entered the room.

“Thin Spots” Character Sketch: Alistair

It’s another character sketch and another bad guy. Alistair goes after Colin’s body while Satan pursues his soul. At least, that’s the way it looks as of now.

Alistair Hyde Naycock Templeton-Smythe was incensed. He had found a spot on his robe, a patch about two inches square where the deep purple of the velvet had somehow faded to a shade lighter. Negligence is what it was. It was all these foreigners that had taken over the dry-cleaning business. They bought everything they wore at Wal-Mart—what did they know about fine fabrics, or care? Your money was all they wanted, with their exorbitant prices and their pretending not to speak good English. Daddy had moved the family to America for lower taxes and bigger business, not to be robbed blind by the offspring of inferior peoples.

“Brumby!” he shouted. “Brumby, to me! Instantly!”

Templeton-Smythe heard the little man’s thumping run in the hallway and in a moment his tentative knock. “Sir?” came the quavering voice, “You called?”

“Of course I called! Come in here at once.”

Brumby, a diminutive man with a hooked nose and large, watery eyes, complied. “Sir?”

Templeton-Smythe shook the offending fold of cloth under his house-boy’s nose. “What is this, Brumby? How did this happen?”

Brumby peered closely at the robe, inclining his head until the tip of his nose almost touched it. “’This,’ um, sir? My apologies, but what is ‘this’?”

“Are you blind, man? It’s got a stain. You took it to be cleaned, therefore I expect you to have an explanation, which I am even now awaiting.”

Brumby licked his lips. “It’s always been there, sir.”

Templeton-Smythe began tapping his foot on the floor.

“The faded spot, sir. Always been there. You recall this was an e-Bay purchase. ‘Nearly new,’ I believe was the description.”

Templeton-Smythe’s tapping foot snapped up and delivered a sharp kick to Brumby’s shin. The little man grimaced, but did not cry out. “Damn you, Brumby, for allowing such a thing to happen. E-Bay, indeed. Have this rag burned. Now bring me my second-best robe, the one with the crescent moons and stars. A fellow wants to look his best when he’s conjuring wealth, power and immortality, don’t you agree?”

“To be sure, sir.”

“Thin Spots” Character Sketches: Bad Guy

Here’s another character sketch, this time for the bad guy (again, for you English majors, that’s the “antagonist”). He’s none other than Old Scratch himself–at an un-princely moment.

Satan perched on the low stone wall over Digger’s Pit, his buttocks hanging well over the wall’s back edge, and flexed his bowels. Nothing came of it—nothing ever did, for it was his nature only to consume, never giving back—but once in a while he liked to come to this lonely spot and just imagine he could defecate. It helped him think, and if ever there was a time for thinking, it was now.

His entire game was about to change and he wasn’t going to go about the matter lightly. In Heaven, the Old Man had taken his eye off the ball, leaving the administration of things to an increasingly arrogant, overconfident and complacent band of angels. Some rumors said The One of One Thousand Names was busy building a new improved, universe; others said he was deep in planning the next phase of this one, some sort of spring cleaning; others said he was simply dead and the angels were covering it up. It didn’t really matter what the truth was. What mattered was that if Satan was going to change things, there was truly no time like the present.

Satan strained, felt a momentary disappointment, then the familiar relaxation. True, he could only inhale, as it were, but that was all right. It had been ordained that way and so the function was correct, suitable. Everything he could ever think of that had been ordained—and he had thought of nearly everything—worked as it should. The stars followed their courses as they should, dying as needed, coming to life as needed, regulating the temperature of the universe so that it was correct for any given moment in time. The physical rules governing the way the universe was held together kept its countless particles in proper relation to one another, ensuring the Old Man had an orderly space within his dominions, including Satan’s dark one.

In many ways, it was an admirable job, he had to admit, and who would know better? He had helped construct it when he was an angel. But the fly in the ointment, the one that had started to corrode the relationship between him and the Old Man in the first place, ultimately leading to the Grand Rebellion, was free will.

All the most intelligent species throughout the universe—Danans in the skies of Erintea, Schlacnossts in the earthy depths of Morrunduntan, Piscenians roaming the endless waters of Hooalchanniz, Humans walking the surfaces of Earth, had all been granted free will. They could choose how to organize themselves, how to express their feelings and thoughts, how to conceive of and worship the Old Man—they could even deny the Old Man’s existence, if they chose.

And what had it led to, all this freedom? The worst kind of chaos. Instead of following the path that would have been most natural, had all things been ordained properly, and quickly having one absolute ruler for each world—the strongest individual—all these beings had disintegrated into factions based on the most absurd guidelines—language, ancestry, features of the land, even their ways of honoring the Old Man. They were so busy bumbling about, fighting each other, making up new rules every two seconds and rebelling against the natural order of the worlds they’d been given to live on that their development was severely delayed and none of them, not one, had evolved to the point where they could be of genuine value to the universe—to its upkeep, its building, the recording of its history—absolutely nothing.

To his way of thinking—and he knew he was right—the proper way was to ordain everything. Find the strongest being on each world, ordain them as absolute ruler, back them up and oh, the strides they would make. In mere millennia they would be fit for service—service to him. And when all the beings on all the worlds served him, they would offer him sacrifice upon sacrifice, and he would feast and feast until at last the wailing hunger in him was satisfied.

“Thin Spots” Character Sketches: Tanya

Here’s another character sketch. Tanya is a recent development. I don’t know exactly what her role in the novel will be, or even if she’ll survive the writing process. I like her, though.

 Tanya Dougherty made sure her pen still had ink, stuck her order tablet in the waistband of her skirt and perched on the edge of a tablet to wait for customers. Like they were going to have any. Doc was such a bastard, opening on Christmas. Anybody going out today was going to go for Chinese, not pizza—it was traditional. Just because he didn’t have a life he didn’t want anyone else to have one, either. Still, she needed the hours and the tips, if there were any. Life in the big city wasn’t cheap.

She’d come to the city a year ago from a little country place call Rathbun Corners. She didn’t have anything particular in mind when she’d moved, just that she was going to die of boredom if she stayed home. Mama had cried when she’d packed up her old Corolla—she’d saved up money from odd jobs for three years to get it—and her little sisters had clung to her, but she had been resolute. The city had been calling her like a siren ever since she’d been a little girl.

Now, after a year, there were times when Rathbun Corners didn’t look so bad. She held down two jobs, the one at Pizza Haven and another one as a shampoo girl at the Hair Apparent salon. Her apartment was two rooms, one of which was the kitchen, and a bathroom. It was cheap in the general scheme of things, but even so, what with gas, utilities and food she found herself scraping the bottom of the barrel at the end of every pay period. Some weeks it was only the fact that Doc let them have free cokes and spaghetti that had kept her from starving to death.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have other options. She was a pretty girl, tall with a slender hourglass shape, bright green eyes and dark hair that cascaded over her shoulders and behaved itself with very little effort on her part. One day, walking home from the drug store, she’d met a man who’d handed her his card and asked her if she’d like to make $1,000 a night, “dancing.”

“I might be from the country, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck,” she’d said. “I am not interested in stripping and I’d appreciate it if you would take your creepy ass away from me.”

“Oh, now, come on, baby, think about it a second,” the guy had said. Then he had stroked her arm.

She’d let him have it with a snap-kick to the nuts. It had brought him to the floor. “One thing about my little hometown being so boring—a lot of kids go up the road to the karate school in Riceborough. I went and liked it so much I went twice a week for six years and practiced at home, too. Touch me again and I’ll show you some more of what I learned.”

She hadn’t been able to land a job as an instructor yet—there was lots of competition and most schools in town hired their own graduates—but she kept looking and in the meantime practiced in an abandoned warehouse near her apartment.

It was a hard life and sometimes she thought about going home, but there was a sense of promise about the city that kept her there, a feeling that something wonderful and amazing was just around the corner. Maybe a great new job. Maybe a cute boyfriend who’d be sweet to her. There was no telling, but she couldn’t shake the feeling, didn’t want to. She loved the lights, the traffic, the bustle of the great, big town.

“Thin Spots” Character Sketches: Lead

In the spirit of sharing my experiences as I craft my first novel, here’s a character sketch for Colin Davis, the lead character (that’s “protagonist” for you English majors).

                Colin Davis wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck and shivered at the thought of the ride ahead of him. Christmas Day, as far as he was concerned, was a day to spend with family during the day and with a good book and a tumbler of scotch in the evening, not to be delivering pizzas. But, he needed the job at Pizza Haven—not just because of the money, but because he could get away with plenty of writing there when he wasn’t driving—so if Doc wanted to open on Christmas Day and asked him to work delivery, he would. Besides, he kind of liked the crusty old fart. And it wasn’t like Christmas with the fam was such great shakes, anyway. It was, in fact, usually so bad that he’d told them work would keep him from showing up at all this year.

Even his scooter, a little Chinese job, seemed reluctant to go to work today. Never a breeze to start, the thing took five solid minutes of coaxing before it finally decided to come to life. When it did awaken, it coughed and shuddered like an old man with influenza. Only when it settled into its customary putt-putt-whine did Colin dare pull it into the street. The last thing he needed was for the two-wheeler to go scootless on him in the middle of traffic—it had happened before, and the ensuing screeching of brakes and honking of horns so close to his unprotected frame had not been something he cared to repeat.

It was bitterly cold. Even bundled up as he was and driving slowly as he could without getting run over, the chill, made worse by the wind of the scooter’s passage, bit into him like a wolf. In two blocks he had goose bumps; in four he was shivering; in six his ears and fingers were shouting with pain. By the time he reached his parking spot in the alley behind Pizza Haven he felt as though he’d crossed the Antarctic by dogsled. He climbed stiffly off the bike, found a place out of the wind behind a pair of trash cans and sat down on the asphalt to shiver and write until Doc showed up.

Words were coming hard the last couple of weeks. He knew why—he was trying to write a story about romance and it was something he didn’t know very much about. There had been a girlfriend or two along the way, for a few months at a stretch, and some hookups briefer than that, but nothing like the passionate, long-term thing he dreamed about and wanted to dramatize in prose.

Thoughts of romance always brought up thoughts of Tanya these days. She waitressed nights at the Haven, so he saw her often, a beauty with long legs and green eyes bright as a cat’s. They were on friendly terms, but she was always a little aloof, and Colin figured she was just way out of his league. That didn’t keep him from daydreaming about her, though, or following her with his eyes when she wasn’t looking, watching the easy swing of her skirt as she went about her work.

Well, enough of that. Mental pictures of pretty waitresses weren’t going to get any fiction written. Colin gave his head a good shake, flexed his interlaced fingers and then took up a well-chewed pencil, waiting for the first word to come. It was “trembling.”

That was as far as he got. Something nudged his buttock and he looked up.

“Hey, Colin. Doc not here yet, I guess?”

“Hi, Tan. Nope, no Doc yet. How’s it going?”

“Okay. I drove over to Rathbun Corners last night and spent most of today doing Christmas with my mama and all. How ‘bout you?”

“Best Christmas ever. I told my family I couldn’t join in the reindeer games because I had to work. Spent the day sleeping in, reading and writing.”

“All by yourself, you mean? On Christmas?”

“It beats the thing with my family by a light year. My sisters hate each other, so they start fighting pretty early, and then my mom tries to calm things down, which gets them mad at her, so she gets mad and starts yelling. That makes my dad crazy, so he starts hitting the Jim Beam and things pretty much go downhill from there, with me catching hell for not going to law school or medical school or business school or something ‘useful’ instead of wasting my time trying to be a writer. And the food’s lousy, too.”

“Well, you can come home with me next year. Mama’s a great cook and we all get along just fine most of the time.”

Colin blushed. “Wow, well… thanks, Tan. That’s really sweet.”

He bent over his notebook, afraid to look at her again. Now a tidal wave of words was coming.