Category: Archive

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

As I mentioned, I found Syd Field’s paradigm outlined in his Screenplay and The Screenwriter’s Workbook very helpful in finalizing my vision for the Mayan fantasy. Several people wanted more information, so I’ll go into more depth on what the paradigm is and how I used it. Just personal preference: I use the Workbook more than the original Screenplay. It’s worded a little different and it just clicks better for me personally, although I have both books.

Okay, so I’ll assume you have a story idea, which includes a subject, a character, and some action. The example Syd uses is: a visitor from outer space misses his spaceship home and is found and befriended by some children, who help him escape. (E.T.) Skimming off the uber-sekrit details of NSR, I have: Epigrapher Dr. Jaid Merritt may be known as the Un-Indiana Jones on campus, but she goes on the dig of her life in Guatemala in order to rescue her father.

The paradigm is sort of a timeline that graphs the major events of your story. Draw a line on your paper. You’ve heard me rambling about the Three Act Structure before. Act I and Act III are each roughly a quarter of your timeline; Act II is the middle half. Mark them off. Then toward the end of Act I, place an X or circle to represent the major turning point that moves your story from setup (the Ordinary World, if you’re more comfortable with the hero’s journey) into confrontation (Accept the Call and Cross the First Threshold). Place another X or mark at the end of Act II, another turning point that moves your story from confrontation to resolution (Return with the Elixir). This is the major turning point in or near your Dark Moment.

That’s it!! See how easy it is?

Where I got hung up was taking the existing paradigm for NSR and figuring out how to place the new, more complex story around/on top of it. It was so large, so overwhelming, I just couldn’t figure it out. Is the new story entirely new? Does it overlap part of NSR? Or encompass it entirely? Was NSR all backstory — or concurrent?

Pulling threads helped me get a grasp on each new story element. Once I got an idea of each thread’s beginning and end, I started to feel where it lay on the paradigm for NSR. The key here is to forget perfectionism. I used pencil and eraser and was determined not to stress out about getting this right from the very first try. I jotted. I doodled ideas. I marked possible places I thought certain events might begin to fall, and then moved it if it felt better somewhere else. I drew arrows, scribbled thoughts on the back and down the margins, all very loose and comfortable. I didn’t stress about balance or symmetry yet. Just flow and feel.

I did this for all the threads and there, on four (** see below) messy sheets of paper, I saw the story laid out in enough detail to see exactly how to start and where to end up.

I finished going thorugh the notecards last night and outlined the current draft of NSR, where I think I need changes, and where the new threads may fall. I’m going to start with clean legal sized paper, the timeline and Jaid’s paradigm (NSR). Then I’ll lay out each story thread (whether the character has a POV or not) on top. I want to be able to see each major player at a glance, where he/she is (I’m spanning Texas, Mexico, and Guatemala at any given moment), and what that means.

I’m sure this will take several drafts. I’ll also go into detail about each thread and make sure it has a solid beginning, middle, end, with a clear goal. I’m a big fan of “every character is the star of his/her own story”, so there will truly be several major mini-stories unfolding. It’ll be a @&#* to manage.

So does it sound crazy when I say I can’t wait to dig in?

** why four pages when there are only three acts? Personally, I like to break Act II into two pieces and have another turning point somewhere around 150-225 pages or so, depending on length. A major crisis in Act II helps break up the sagging middle. It gives me a “candybar” scene to write to, as Holly Lisle calls it. I put this extra turning point on the second page, so each page has a turning point except the last (Act III), which actually has one or two big climaxes.

Ironically, the first time I drew the NSR paradigm, I messed up the first turning point, which certainly didn’t help me see the story I was trying to add. I had the midpoint turning point listed in Act I instead of my true “accept the call” turning point. Big difference! Once I got that straight in my head, it was much easier to lay down the other threads.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

My new motto: when all else fails, turn to Syd Field’s Screenplay.

I’d forgotten about the paradigm he outlines, although I know the Three Act Structure and Hero’s Journey. He has a slightly different spin on the same thing. Most significantly, he tells you exactly what you need to know in order to say what the story’s about, and exactly how many turning points.

For Night Sun Rising (NSR) I had all this figured out. I drew the paradigm for it days ago and then stared at it, overwhelmed with how to fit the “new” story either on top or extended or…something. That’s when I started Connecting the Dots and Pulling Threads. Those helped, definitely.

Last night, I came back to the Paradigm, or timeline. First, I took four sheets of normal 8.5×11 paper and labeled them Act I, Act II Part 1, Act II Part 2, and Act III. I marked out the paradigm for NSR again, and added some of the plot detail that I already knew, along with Jaid’s journey. Then I started considering the new threads I identified and matching up any overlaps, where possible.

What I found helpful was to identify key characters/plot threads and their movement, even if they aren’t POV characters. So I have my bad guys making their move, and I can track it, even though none of them have a POV. Between my possible scene cards, and all the brainstorming and doodling…

Dawn broke. The pieces fell into place. Angels started singing.

Seriously, I have it. The green and red threads (new) now fit on top of NSR. It all makes sense. I finally FINALLY!!! figured out how the end of the new threads completes and compliments the end of Jaid’s story in NSR and what that means for the future.

*dies gasps keels over*

I think I even have a good start on what the next book will be. I mean, it is frickin’ hysterical. The set up is perfect. I’d laugh if I hadn’t been beating my head so hard that I left a bloody smear on my Demotivator.

Now that I have 4 pages of very messy scribbles and exclamation points, I need to more finely define the scenes. The first order of business is to go through the existing draft of NSR and create a notecard for each key scene. I added the new threads through Act I, but everything got seriously muddled in Act II Part 1. Some brand new conflict needs to be added that will significantly impact the existing scenes with Jaid and Ruin. So I decided to get the whole first draft outlined, then I’ll step back with the paradigm spread out in front of me and a nice stack of clean notecards to begin the real work.

The “final” paradigm will be on 4 legal sized pages to allow room for all the plot threads. Xibalba, it might end up on four sheets of poster board before I’m done, because this sucker is huge.

I see it. At last, I see it. Beginning, middle, end; purple, black, orange, green, and red, all blended together into a tapestry of Story.

I worked on it so long last night that my eyes started to hurt and my back was killing me. I felt this burning obsession to write it all down, now, before I lose it. However, the existing draft of NSR kept sucking me in. I was supposed to only skim enough to get the notecards down, but I ended up reading more than I planned. And that’s a very good thing.

So the bad news: I won’t be giving away NSR as a serial on the blog.

The good news: most of it will be salvaged and become something much bigger and meaner. It’s so complex, now, I have five colors for POV threads! Whew, boy, it is definitely a doosie.

But I. Must. Write. Faster. There’s a very important date tied to this story. It would be really stupid for me to dink around and miss it. So you know what October-December are going to be, right? Nose to the grindstone, belt another complex, deeper draft out. In other words,

Revision Xibalba.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Continuing the discussion from yesterday on Connect the Dots, I am working through a large tangled mess of episodes to find the structure of this story. I said yesterday that I picked up a green thread and began pulling it out of the tangles. As a result, I got several scene idea cards. The key for this process was letting go of my determination to FIT this thread into the weave of story I already had.

I decided I just wanted to find out about this thread, independent of the rest of the story or world. If the scene cards happened days in the past before NSR even starts, that’d be fine. Really, I pretended that NSR didn’t even exist.

I did the same later last night with the red thread. At first, all I got were “fact” cards. They were important elements of the past and setup, but they weren’t true scenes. That’s okay–it was still stuff I didn’t know. For example, I didn’t know how Nicholas’s plan to ruin Charlie had actually started, nor what turned his plot from a simple “revenge” plot to something more, thanks to Michael Ito’s influence. (I got the foundation for those details from the character connections and pulling the thread helped define them.) Finally I got to some possible scenes, and I was stunned when I landed on an idea I never had before. As a result, I created a new character, and it ties the Dallas (green) thread to the red thread.

Magic. It really is. I knew I had a thread in Dallas, but I didn’t know how they hooked up. Now, I do.

The other important “freedom” I allowed myself in this process: I didn’t limit myself to POV. I took a story thread and pulled it — but I didn’t enforce one character’s POV, because I don’t know for sure who will carry that burden yet. That freedom led me to this new character that I really like, and I just found out about her yesterday.

See, one thing I set out to do in this story was to NOT follow the standard “cliched” urban fantasy structures as much as possible. Yeah, I have a female lead, but she is not kickass. She’s the “Un-Indiana Jones.” She’s more comfortable in her private library with her research spread out before her than tromping around in the rainforest. I also wanted several other strong female characters (not necessarily kickass either), friends or potential friends, that weren’t obvious sequel bait. This isn’t a Brotherhood world, although strong men definitely play a part.

Pulling that red thread last night gave me a brand new character and I can’t wait to learn more about her.

I still don’t know if this is a large story arc with Jaid as the protagonist all the way through, or potentially other protagonists to carry each individual book. That’s okay. The tangled mess is a little tidier and I’m getting some really good glimmers of where the story is hiding.

One theme of this story that I think I can safely mention without giving away the farm is the quatrefoil glyph ol for the Otherworld, or sometimes simply “heart of.” I think I’m finally getting to the story buried at the heart of all these ideas. If you knew the premise set up for this story, you’d think it very ironic that I’m searching for the ol. Charlie Merritt’s life obsession is finding the ol. It represents his line to cross. How much will he give up to find it? What’s his sacrifice?

Have you ever had a killer story idea, characters, or world, yet you just couldn’t find the ol?

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

As I’ve blogged the last few days, I’ve really been wrestling with the Mayan fantasy. It’s high concept. Cool mythology. I’ve got lots of backstory, blah blah blah already figured out. But I could not find the STORY. You know, the one to WRITE.

I have snippets of backstory from 30 years ago. I have the whole history of how Jaid’s father found the very first clue and the sacrifice made to keep it. I went from a handful of characters in NSR to dozens more with several brand new subplots, bringing lots of action and conflict into the arena. But still, I couldn’t find the begin and end points for a story. I had all these episodes. Little cliffhanger ideas, you know, like a weekly TV show that keeps you coming back. But no STORY. I mean, even in Prison Break, a show I never thought would last past the first prison break, has an overall story arc. That’s what I was missing.

In frustration last night, I started tackling the story from a different angle. What I was missing before in NSR was complexity. I had characters that I liked, sure, and a cool plot, but there wasn’t a lot of interaction between the characters. Most of the time, it was only Jaid and Ruin on scene live, with very few other players. Pretty limited in scope. Now I have all these new characters, but no idea how they all relate to one another.

For whatever reason, I decided to start with Quin Salazar, an FBI agent in Dallas. I had an idea that someone was going to call him for a favor. Why would this guy call Quin? How did they know each other? What was their connection?

And that’s what really started to break the story apart for me. I had the theme and premise already figured out. This story is all about crossing lines. Characters being put in such stress and danger that they’d cross the one line they swore they’d never cross, or they’d risk losing everything they value. But I was missing the complexity and interaction BETWEEN characters.

I drew a bubble at the top of the page for Quin Salazar and another for Jackson Davis, the man who calls him for a favor. Then I started brainstorming their connections until I hit on a key commonality for them both. They both want something very very much, but will cross–or refuse to cross–very different lines to achieve their goals. Unbelievably–or maybe this is simply where the magic is–I found a similarity between them. A single theme I can play between them and show through character how one will cross the line and one won’t, no matter how much he needs to.

Amazed, I decided to try it again. I started a new page and drew Jaid at the top with her best friend Callie. I brainstormed a bit, and found again, a very common theme to the core question of who will cross the line and what that means to the story.

Encouraged, I then decided to try something that anyone staring at a tangled mess of expensive yarn would probably do to salvage it. I picked up a thread and started pulling it out of the tangles.

For whatever reason, this thread is green. I can’t explain why because I don’t know, other than my mind told me to pick up the green pen and not the red or black one when I started making notes. I started with Quin Salazar again. How would the FBI get involved when the dig that starts everything is in Guatemala? What does that have to do with Jackson Davis calling him? I opened a new pack of notecards and jotted 5 or 6 possible scenes, using only Quin as the reference, and only my green pen. I immediately got a few implications for the other threads.

Intrigued, I went back to Jaid’s father and what started it all 30 years ago. At the top of the paper (turned on its side landscape), I started with Charlie Merritt, Sam Gerard, Nicholas Linkyn, and Michael Ito. They met up 30 years ago and something very tragic happened. One woman has been missing ever since, and another woman dumped one guy and married another. They’ve all been polite enemies ever since.

That drawing with connections led to two more common themes, playing Charlie and Sam together vs. Nicholas and Michael. I’ve also got a page dedicated to Charlie and Nicholas. More dots. More connections. More lines to be drawn, literally and figuratively. What’s the line driving each character? What’s the last line left to cross? Will they or won’t they cross it?

I’ll continue doing this for all the new characters, drawing lines and connecting dots to get at the core themes for each set of characters. Next, I’ll be pulling a red thread as far as I can, and see how that affects the green. I’m hoping that as I do this, the pieces will finally fall into place and I’ll see the start and end of the story that I want to achieve.

What inspired all this character-connect-the-dots process? There was a new show last season called Life, about a cop who did some really hard time (10 years) for a crime he didn’t commit, and when he finally got out–his attorney got his case overturned and the city paid him several million dollars as a result–he immediately went back to his job as a cop to find who had set him up and solve the murder. At the end of the season, they showed this huge people “map” he had drawn in a secret study in his house. It showed all the connections between people, who was involved in his life, who might have been responsible. As he proved a person could not have set him up, he moved the picture around. That visual stuck with me and that’s sort of what I’m doing now, only on paper.

I suppose if I get desperate enough, I might print out the pictures for each character and stick them on the wall.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I’m drowning in the Mayan fantasy.

I’ve got the premise, theme, and a buttload of characters. I definitely know the mythology. I even thought I had about 63K of backstory and character definition figured out. So what’s the problem?

I ain’t got no stinking structure.

My original thought was to tweak a few things in NSR and then give it away as a prequel here on the blog as I write the “real” story. However…I can’t get any underlying structure on the new story with these characters. The structure of NSR is cemented in my mind, and when I try to extend it to the new idea, it just doesn’t work. The stakes aren’t there for Jaid as a protagonist if I lose the on-sceen action of NSR.

So then I thought maybe I’d “fix” NSR to pull in some of the new threads (it was short anyway) and come up with the overall story arc. But that falls apart too. I can’t figure out where to draw the line. I don’t know if the problem is in genre structure specifically–NSR was paranormal romance and I want to move to more urban fantasy instead–or the concept itself. I see shots in my head for this story, but they don’t stick to anything yet. I could see this more as a TV show or movie instead of book. Maybe that’s my problem. I keep seeing these Prison Break-like cliffhangers, where the characters’ situations just get worse and worse…but what’s the END? What’s the resolution? I don’t know.

If I don’t know, then I can’t figure out the turning points and beginning–middle–end transition.

Basically I have all these cool characters and backstory out the whazoo. I have an incredible world and mythology. Yet no stinking story!!! It’s like having several gorgeous skeins of expensive, pettable wool and not a single knitting hook or loom to be seen.

I’m desperate enough that I pulled out my Syd Field screenwriter’s books. I started drawing pictures. I can map the paradigm for NSR all day. Can’t get nowhere else because that original story keeps staring at me. Hence the jackhammer request. Maybe if I bust that idea into rubble, the new idea will solidy.

Back to pen and paper for more doodles.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I stand on the edge of darkness that yawns like a massive mouth of eternity. Let me tell you, that first step is a doozie.

I’m building a story that is large, intricate, and most of all, intimidating. I hesitate, wondering if it’s too big for me to handle. I feel like a juggler staring up at flaming stars tumbling from the sky, stars I must keep in the air at all cost. I’ve created over 30 characters for this story (and I have a feeling I’m not done). It’s a little Prison Break. A little Numb3rs. A little Ruin, the movie that totally ticked me off. And a bunch I can’t even begin to say where I picked this or that up. I’ve sponged ideas off everything I’ve ever touched and heard, and it’s all converging, now, in this story.

Yes, I speak of the Mayan fantasy, which has become so much more than I originally envisioned. Night Sun Rising was only a drop in the bucket. An insignificant speck in the worlds within worlds this story has become.

I remember someone telling me a book cannot be all things. It should be tight and lean. I remember, and I tremble a moment in doubt, yet this story has a mind of its own. A premise is unfolding, and if it’s as tight and mean and big as I think, it’ll be a killer.

After all, everybody has a line to cross.

Sorry, I’m still not in a position to share a Friday Snippet.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

This is still one of my favorite little stories that I ever wrote, dedicated again for this day.

What a Pretty Day

(it’s a feel good happy ending story)

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

That Man picked up the monsters a bit early from school today so they could come get me at the airport. Only one of them actually gave me a hug, and she was asleep! 🙁 They made up for it, though, over dinner. They had a good week, although each of them were in trouble for talking in class and had to walk extra laps at recess.

I had to buy another book at the airport. I finished Poison Study in Memphis while waiting for my next plane. There were parts of Poison Study that I really loved. Although it fell apart a little for me at the end, it was still a really good read. The book in the hopper now is The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen. Excellent so far. I even found time to work on Ann’s synopsis! Go, Ann!

I’ve already made a pot of Caribou Coffee which I’m huddled around while I pet my personal laptop and try to catch up on e-mail and blogs.

I’m tired, though, and work starts up bright and early tomorrow. I’m so tired I actually thought I read “wolfshitter” in an e-mail instead of “wolfshifter,” which I thought was hysterical.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

That’s a techie joke that came up in today’s meetings with our vendor. See, I’m here with a very technical guy from my company, meeting a mixture of very techy guys, sales guys, and the base system guys at our vendor. I can more easily talk shop with the latter group of guys than the techy ones. (And yes, other than the secretary at the check-in desk, I’m the only female in this group.)

They got to talking about “pojo” today — plain old java objects — and wars — web archive, a way the java code is compiled — and although I knew roughly what those things are, the topics flying through the air were way more than I could follow. So I made a comment to the (relatively bored) back-end system guy sitting beside me that they were having a pojo war and I was sure glad I wasn’t involved.

Today was the think-so-hard-your-brain-hurts day. Yesterday was the oooh-I’m-getting-so-many-ideas-my-brain-hurts day. I stayed up late last night capturing my thoughts/summaries for my boss and re-drawing a bunch of business diagrams. I didn’t even crack a book open, let alone think about my own book files. That’s okay. The analytical side of my brain is firing on all cylinders and I’ll just have to ride it out. This is my life, and as odd as it may sound, I do get all fired up about these aspects of the Evil Day Job too. (Or else, I obviously wouldn’t be here.)

So in the end, I am in the pojo war, whether I admit it or not.

It’s been a terrific trip. We’ve learned a lot, shared a lot, and met up with people I’ve occasionally seen over the years. The only thing that would make this trip better would be if I could immediately go up to the home office and share everything in person with my coworkers. While I do love telecommuting from home, it’s times like these that I wish I could sit down with my coworkers and friends so they could see the spark in my eye while I diagram a bunch of stuff for them.

Oh, well. They’ll just have to hear the spark in my voice over the phone.

Tomorrow, I’m homeward bound.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Boy oh boy, 4 a.m. was a loooong time ago. However, I had a pretty relaxing afternoon here in the hotel. I unpacked, checked e-mail (thank you for free wi-fi!), and even finished Omega Games. Yay!! Now I must not start my other book, or I’ll have it finished too fast and won’t have anything for the plane ride home. (Gee that’d be too bad if I had to buy ANOTHER book at the airport…considering I almost bought two in Memphis even though I do have a spare.)

The flight was uneventful for the most part. A little bumpy on the leg from Springfield to Memphis, and packed, every seat full. I hooked up with my coworker in Memphis — although we work “together” I don’t really know him well since I telecommute from home, so that was rather hilarious. He asked if I wanted him to put me down as a driver on the rental car and I about passed out. I really hate to drive in strange places.

We even got our preliminary “game plan” stuff out of the way for tomorrow, so the rest of the evening is mine to iron for tomorrow and simply enjoy the quiet. I already checked in with the monsters. Evidently Princess Monster dropped Littlest Monster on her head twice. Not sure how that happened…but everyone is okay and already fighting over who gets to sleep in the big bed with daddy, and who has to sleep on the floor. I can hear all the bickering already…actually…no.

QUIET. That’s what that noise, or rather the lack thereof, is. What a wondrous thing.

My eyes are killing me, so I might not try to write anything tonight. May just laze around a bit and hit the sack early.

Have a great week, everyone!