Writing Project Notes: Toby and Kasserine
May. 5th, 2005 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, in the interest of getting my brain working, since it doesn't seem to be, I'm going to list out my writing projects as they stand and do the GTD thing with them.
One of the problems with most of my stories is that I know the beginning and the ending, but not enough "middle." There are an awful lot of stories where I have a plotwall built and one post-it note in the middle reading "And here a miracle happens..."
So, let's review. First, a project (1) has more than one physical action, (2) has an outcome that is valuable, desirable, and well-articulated, (3) is something to which I've made a commitment.
Warning: if you plan on reading any of my stories, there are spoilers here.
Toby and Kasserine. This is my "pandering" novel. It has everything: fin de' siecle politics and social commentary, teenagers bartering for their lives with their bodies, and catpeople. Target audience: the people who greenlighted Kushiel's Dart. First targeted publisher: Tor.
The plot: It is 1899 in an alternative universe. Once, three thousand years ago, magic worked, and the Pharoahs of Egypt commissioned a great sorcerous work: the union of man and cat. From this work arose The Bastet, a race of beings with which share the Earth with us. In the U.S. of 1899, the Bastet were slaves along with Africans and Chinese until the end of the civil war. The social placement of the Bastet, who were never very numerous, is far different-- in some ways better, in some uglier-- than the others, because Bastet and humans cannot interbreed. This, their minority position, their extended apparent youthfulness, and their inherent desirability, has often led to their falling into the sex trade.
Toby is a young male Bastet whose mother was the live-in "servant" of a wealthy steel and horse baron from Connecticut who, in a show of compassion and curiosity, sends Toby to a finishing school for young men. Kasserine is a young female Bastet who is the ward (and more) of Gerard, an internationalist living in Vienna who has spent his life dealing with Bastet antiquities and who is passionately dedicated to the civil rights of the Bastet. Professor Wilhelm Pabodie is an Egyptologist working along the Nile who discovers The Tisslet Stone, the site where the making of the Bastet occurred.
Toby's story is about the blatant cruelty of racist attitudes towards the Bastet; Kasserine's about the subtle kind that both binds her to Gerard and makes her vulnerable. Then the magic comes back, and Professor Pabodie's discovery takes on enormous meaning for everyone.
Desired successful outcome: The purpose of this project is to get something into readers' hands that they will enjoy and will make them want to read more of my stories.
Next actions that will move towards the desired outcome:
As an aside, I am going to run out this afternoon and buy The Delgado's CD Hate if I can find it at one of the two used CD stores in my neighborhood. I had never listened to them before and there's something about The Light Before We Land that... it's hard to explain. It's rare that a piece of music intrinsically makes me want to cry, but this one does. Maybe it's just the stress talking.
One of the problems with most of my stories is that I know the beginning and the ending, but not enough "middle." There are an awful lot of stories where I have a plotwall built and one post-it note in the middle reading "And here a miracle happens..."
So, let's review. First, a project (1) has more than one physical action, (2) has an outcome that is valuable, desirable, and well-articulated, (3) is something to which I've made a commitment.
Warning: if you plan on reading any of my stories, there are spoilers here.
Toby and Kasserine. This is my "pandering" novel. It has everything: fin de' siecle politics and social commentary, teenagers bartering for their lives with their bodies, and catpeople. Target audience: the people who greenlighted Kushiel's Dart. First targeted publisher: Tor.
The plot: It is 1899 in an alternative universe. Once, three thousand years ago, magic worked, and the Pharoahs of Egypt commissioned a great sorcerous work: the union of man and cat. From this work arose The Bastet, a race of beings with which share the Earth with us. In the U.S. of 1899, the Bastet were slaves along with Africans and Chinese until the end of the civil war. The social placement of the Bastet, who were never very numerous, is far different-- in some ways better, in some uglier-- than the others, because Bastet and humans cannot interbreed. This, their minority position, their extended apparent youthfulness, and their inherent desirability, has often led to their falling into the sex trade.
Toby is a young male Bastet whose mother was the live-in "servant" of a wealthy steel and horse baron from Connecticut who, in a show of compassion and curiosity, sends Toby to a finishing school for young men. Kasserine is a young female Bastet who is the ward (and more) of Gerard, an internationalist living in Vienna who has spent his life dealing with Bastet antiquities and who is passionately dedicated to the civil rights of the Bastet. Professor Wilhelm Pabodie is an Egyptologist working along the Nile who discovers The Tisslet Stone, the site where the making of the Bastet occurred.
Toby's story is about the blatant cruelty of racist attitudes towards the Bastet; Kasserine's about the subtle kind that both binds her to Gerard and makes her vulnerable. Then the magic comes back, and Professor Pabodie's discovery takes on enormous meaning for everyone.
Desired successful outcome: The purpose of this project is to get something into readers' hands that they will enjoy and will make them want to read more of my stories.
Next actions that will move towards the desired outcome:
- Create a plotwall.
- Create character profiles of Toby's "family"
- Create character profiles for Gerard and Kasserine's patrons, investors, and interested parties
- Make plot cards for the first five chapters
- Read more fin de' siecle fiction
As an aside, I am going to run out this afternoon and buy The Delgado's CD Hate if I can find it at one of the two used CD stores in my neighborhood. I had never listened to them before and there's something about The Light Before We Land that... it's hard to explain. It's rare that a piece of music intrinsically makes me want to cry, but this one does. Maybe it's just the stress talking.
