Another flake in our snowflake!

Now things start to get sticky (and long). We now need to bring together our characters and (according to Randy) to similar stuff to them that we did for the novel, plus some! What we need for each character is:

• The character's name 
• A one-sentence summary of the character's storyline 
• The character's motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?) 
• The character's goal (what does he/she want concretely?) 
• The character's conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?) 
• The character's epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change? 
• A one-paragraph summary of the character's storyline 

Well, I think we have most of this information except for the summary and that's the fun part. I always like this part since it lets me look at the story from the bad guys point of view, and keeps me from making a one dimensional villain. Let's borrow from out HtTS work and expand the details of our characters. Since I'm writing a single point of view story from Mark's perspective, Mark will be easy

• Mark Nealson
  1. Mark Nealson is possessed by an Archangel and must lead the seelie court against the demon that stole his children
  2. Mark wants to be normal and successful.
  3. Mark wants his children back.
  4. First, the seelie court steals them, then the fallen manages to kidnap them, and being posses is anything but normal.
  5. Don't be afraid of change, change is life.6. Mark is suffering from blackouts during martial arts matches, but instead of failing, he's winning. He returns home from his latest victory and admits it to his wife after the kids go down for bed and during this conversation the house is assaulted by four men (who rise from the dead when slain) and in the aftermath the children are missing his wife is barely conscious, the cat is talking to him, and the house is on fire. He follows the cat on the urging of his wife and the cat leads him and her out behind the house and into the world of the seelie court where he is required to lead the court into battle to avenge the theft of his children from the court by the unseelie court. During the battle in the graveyard of the weeping angel, Mark faces the fallen angel and drives him off, but not before he grabs his daughter and flees toward the rail yard. Mark decides to leave his son in the card of the seelie court again and pursues the fallen on battles him atop a racing train while trying to keep his daughter from falling or being dropped from the train. In the end, Mark leaves his daughter in the care of a church and pursues the fallen angel to the top of an abandoned building and defeats him in a rather close battle where Mark offers to sacrifice himself to drive the fallen away permanently, but the willingness to sacrifice is enough. 
• Kaylah Nealson - Former Accountant, Marital Artist (see Mark), Mother, Wife, Web Comic Author, MS
  1. Kaylah is suffering from MS and feels worthless because of it but a battle for her children proves her anything but helpless.
  2. Kaylah wants to be free of MS.
  3. Kahlah wants her family to be safe.
  4. Thugs storm the house and try to steal her children, and Mark is having psychological issues.
  5. MS is not the end of the world, and she is holding herself back in fear.
  6. Kaylah is house bound, and views every setback in her life as being caused by her MS. When Mark tells her about his strange problem, she tries at first to blame it on herself. She can no longer go on blaming herself when the thugs attack the house and make a play for her children and with Mark manages to fight them off, despite her very real physical problems. In great pain and barely holding on to consciousness, she see and hears the cat talking to Mark, and when he confirms she's not hallucinating, she urges him to take her with him after the children. Hearing the tale of batltle to come, she tells Mark to go after them, and she will handle the police back at home. She returns to the real world and puts on an act to convince the police that some of the thugs actually escaped from the house and that Mark and she followed them out the back of the house, only she was unable to keep up and Mark went on without her. Then she organizes the mundane details of surviving a fire and waits fretfully for her families return. She is waiting at home when Mark arrives and walks to him with support, unsteady but more confident in herself. 

Okay, that's enough for today ... enjoy your writing!

Next fractal in the snowflake

More on the snowflake!

Randy says that the next step is to expand our starting sentence into a paragraph.  He likes three disasters and an ending.  Set up the story beginning in the first sentence.  The next sentences are for each of the disasters and the final sentence is the ending.  I like this structure.  Let's take a look at our sentence and our mind map.

Our starting sentence needs to set up that Mark is having black-outs that he cannot explain.

Then we need some disaster to trigger him into action.  Let's have the bad guy attack his house to get his children, not find them and leave Mark wondering where the children are and why is the cat telling him to follow him under the hill in the back yard.

The next disaster needs to be that the unseelie court steals the children from the seelie court while Mark is there, and Marks Angel appears along with the fallen angel, and the seelie require that Mark lead them into battle..

The next disaster is that the Fallen angel steals one oif the children, forcing Mark to choose to leave one of them in possible danger.  Mark chooses to go after his stolen child, leaving the other with the seelie court.

Finally, Mark and the Fallen Angel fight it out on a moving train, with the life of his child on the line whether he wins or looses.

Mark rescues his child from the Fallen Angel and then decides to stop the angel now, rather than let him go after his or some other child again.  He throws down, and they have an epic battle somewhere.

Ok, now I have to get all of these ideas into a paragraph.

Mark Nealson is suffering from blackouts during martial arts matches, but instead of failing, he's winning.   He returns home and admits it to his wife after the kids go down for bed and during this conversation the house is assaulted by four men (who rise from the dead when slain) and in the aftermath the children are missing his wife is unconscious, the cat is talking to him, and the house is on fire.  He follows the cat on the urging of his wife and the cat leads him out behind the house and into the world of the seelie court where he is required to lead the court into battle to avenge the theft of his children from the court by the unseelie court. During the battle in the graveyard of the weeping angel, Mark faces the fallen angel and drives him off, but not before he grabs his daughter and flees toward the rail yard.  Mark decides to leave his son in the card of the seelie court again and pursues the fallen on battles him atop a racing train while trying to keep his daughter from falling or being dropped from the train.    In the end, Mark leaves his daughter in the care of a church and pursues the fallen angel to the top of an abandoned building and defeats him in a rather close battle where Mark offers to sacrifice himself to drive the fallen away permanently, but the willingness to sacrifice is enough.

Okay, wow, that's a lot of run on sentences.  but it was kinda the only way to get what I wanted to happen in five sentences.    I think the first and second sentences are fine.  Lot's of room for character development there, but after that, meh.  I think I'm going to need to exapand those a lot (hey!  welcome to snowflake step #3!

Our one sentence summary for Angelic Possession

The snowflake method isn't by any means perfect.  It is, however, pretty damn good at putting the character into your novel.  I haven't found it too helpful in world building for my novel.  That's where I careen from one method to another as the mood strikes me.  In this case, we've got a simple mind-map laid out with a number of interesting characters and ideas we want to explore, but not right now.

If you recall, our novel is about the war between heaven and hell fought in the real (sort of) world.  Somehow, the fair realms got sucked into this in the mind map.  Guess I've got fairies on the brain.  In any case, on with the snowflake method.

What we need here is a short, rather pithy sentence to hang our novel on.  Go read the New York Time best Sellers lists and you will find a number of these sentences.  This is an art form.  I'm going to start with the first sentence that pops into my head and we'll tweak it from there.

Here goes.

"A martial arts using father is possessed by an angel bent on stopping one of the fallen from bringing about the end of the world and the fey get mixed up in all of this."

Wow.  Thirty-five words.  Randy says you should strive for fifteen.  I've got some pruning to do.  Let's begin.  Well, I know I can trim "end of the world" down to "apocalypse".  "Bringing about" can go down to "starting".  I think I can trim 'get mixed up in all of this" down to 'are involved".  Let's see it and recount.

"A martial arts using father is possessed by an angel bent stopping one of the fallen from starting the apocalypse and the fey are involved."

Okay, down to twenty-five words.  Not too bad.  Let's drop the leading 'A', it's pretty weak and the sentence can stand alone without it. Let's also drop the 'is' and replace it with a comma.  The last phrase is weak too, we can drop the 'and' and use a comma there, and maybe re-write it 'leads the fey to war'.  That only nets us one additional word, but gains in strength.

"Martial arts using father, possessed by an angel bent on stopping one of the fallen from starting the apocalypse, leads the fey to war."

Twenty four words now.  We can change "one of the fallen" to "a demon".  We should also strengthen angenl to archangel.  Wow, just noticed if we change 'art' to 'artist' we can drop 'using'.  Let's see what that looks like:

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel bent on stopping a demon from starting the apocalypse, leads the fey to war."

Twenty-one words now.  Let's bring the fey more to the center stage.  We can drop "bent on stopping" with "against" then.  Let's do that.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads the fey to war against an apocalypse starting demon."

Halfway through that, I realized I also had to re-word the demon and the apocalypse plans.  Got it down to seventeen words.  I don't think this is focused enough on the father,  What is his reason for all of this.  It is his kids.  Let's bring in sacrificing the kids and drop the apocalypse.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads the fey against the demon that took his kids."

Still at seventeen, but a much better sentence, I think.  We can drop "the" from the sentence, giving us:

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against demon that stole his children."

Fifteen words, but I don't think were are done. Unfortunately, we need "the" in front of "demon".  The sentence reads better with it.

"Martial artist father, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against the demon that stole his children."

Sixteen words, but hold on to your horses!  I can drop "father" since I have "children" at the end of the sentence!

"Martial artist, possessed by an archangel, leads fey against the demon that stole his children."

Mind Map (or how my screwy brain works)

I spent some time over lunch today with a piece of graph paper and drew out a quick map of the relationships floating around in my head.  Then I cleaned it up and put it into Excel so I could post it here.  Here are my thoughts on the above diagram:

1. It looks like I have two axis of conflict: Seelie/Unseelie and Angel/Fallen.
2. "The Ban".  I like the sound of that.  It's the agreement between heaven and hell on leaving mankind alone.  What it says, specifically, is: "No Immortal Angel may directly affect the mortal world."
3. The Angels have powers, different on both sides:
1. Micheal: Fighting, he is very good at it.  None can stand against him.  He is also able to heal all but mortal wounds very, very quickly.
2. Apollyon: Telekinesis and wall walking.
3. Both Angles are telepathic.
4. Apollyon is getting around the ban by having the unseelie court summon him to a un-buried body, while Michael is just possessing Mark.
5. Mark is going to seek allies from the seelie court once Lightning tells him about it.

Now for the characters, as they sit right now:

• Mark Nealson - Graphic Designer, Martial Artist (Kung Fu and Tai Chi), Father, Husband, Cyclist, Collector of Comics Books
• Kaylah Nealson - Former Accountant, Marital Artist (see Mark), Mother, Wife, Web Comic Author, MS
• William Nealson - 10 Year Old, Video Game Enthusiast, Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament Dueler, Practical Joker
• Victoria Nealson - 6 Year Old, Likes Stuffed Animals and Horses, Watching Television,  Sweet tooth
• Lightning - House cat, Black with white lightning shaped blaze, Cat Sidhe, servitor of the Summer Queen
• Michael - Archangel, Protector of the weak, Lecherous.  Takes over control if Mark is daydreaming.
• Appollyon - Fallen angel, patron of violent death, cruel, cold, and manipulative
• Queen Morgause - Queen of the Winter Sidhe and the Unseelie Court, Dislikes all Angels but sees this conflict as a way to spread chaos and change.
• Queen Uonaidh - Queen of the Summer Sidhe and the Seelie Court, Not fond of the Angels, dislikes the fallen.  Honor and beauty above all else.

Okay, a few points.  The family is based on my own, with tweaks to change things up a bit.  The Angel taking over when Mark is not paying attention come from personal experience.  Sort of.

I earned my Black Belt in Kung Fu a number of years ago and picked up some Tai Chi along the way.   Be patient, this is needed.  Turns out I had a gift for sparring, linking speed and size.  One of the older black belts took me under his wing while I was still around blue belt, and he would spout these sentences that made absolutely no sense with words I completely understood.  And he was American!

Like, "Be the calm int he center of the storm", or even, "Flow like water".  Now, it makes sense.  No I can't explain it any better.  You just have to experience it.  Yup, that sucks, but that's the way it goes.

With that background, you can understand what I'm talking abut.  He would regularly clean my clock in sparring.  One day, as we rotated to new sparring partners, I wound up paired with him.  I started thing how much this was going to hurt, how embarrassing this was to get cleaned by someone half my size and older to boot.  Then I heard the instructor shouting "Break!" which was weird because I didn't remember hearing the "Begin!".

The black belt was lying on the ground several feet away.  He picked himself gingerly off the ground, leaned in and said, "Nice sweep, but the kick and the punch on the way down was probably overkill."  I still have no memory of the match.  At all.  I wasn't paying attention and my body took over in self defense.

That was the seed of the idea that was planted for this novel.  What if an Angel took over in a moment of distraction?  Why?  What would be going on?  If Angels can interfere, why not the Fallen, and if the Fallen, why not the Fey?

From questions, comes novels...

Next time, I think I'm going to snowflake a little...

Write On!

What are we writing about again?

I wrote a novella a couple of years ago with the working title of Angelic Possession.  Kinda nifty idea I thought. It came from an idle thought:  You can be possessed by devils.  Devils are, according to most scriptures, fallen angels.  Devils can do nothing that angels cannot, or evil would be more powerful than good.  So, ergo,  angles can possess people as well.

The book stank.  Unless you liked reading juvenile books filled with action and no character growth.  Okay, there was character growth in one character, who only was on screen maybe one chapter.  Lots of great action.  I'm really good at writing action scenes.  If you read this thing you'd think I suck at character though.

Did I mention I tend to leap from planning to writing to soon?  This is what happens when you do that. Writers don't let Writers write to soon!

So, I thought to myself the other week, this is a really good idea, I just need to re-work it from the ground up.  Should be pretty easy, I've already written it once before (poorly) so I should know where all of the minefields are.

So, here we go.

My plan:

I'm a big fan of two very different methods of writing and I find I write better when I combine them.  I'm sure everyone out there has heard of the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermanson.   I'm also a huge fan of Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways.

I love how the Snowflake Method forces me to focus on the characters and the scenes.  I love how HtTS forces me to brainstorm and track things in a very different way.  I'm going to jump back and forth between the methods as the whim takes me.

Writing in Full View!

Writing is a messy endeavor.  Most people choose to do it alone, away from prying eyes.  Not me.  I've got my own opinions on what works, and why, and I've never published anything outside of a short story in high school.  And I'm fifty now.  Man, what credentials!

In any case, and assorted other excuses for writing, I've always wanted to experiment with this.  I have written quite a bit, but I always seem to leap from planning to writing too soon and the novels have suffered for it.  So this time I'm hoping that you folks can keep me honest and on track.

Right now the plan is to post at least  twice a week.  I'd like to post every day, but I know how well that works out.  So I'm only promising two posts, but hoping for more.

Wish me  luck!