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[elfs]

So far, so good. It's September 4th and I've written 4,021 words of Caprice Starr. The plot seems to be bumping along, not at warp speed but decently enough. The three critical moments in chapter one have been set: Daniel, Mila, and the Bureau have all laid their traps for her, ready to go off all in good time. (Well, the Bureau's goes off at the end of chapter one, but I need a crisis to keep the reader going, don't I?)

Comments

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I don't know...do you?

Is story writing little more than flagrant descriptions interspersed with one emergency after another?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

To some extent: "A story is about a character who has a problem, how he goes about solving that problem, the obstacles that prevent him from solving the problem, ending with a final expression of the problem and (usually) a clear resolution of that problem."

It may be that the problem is deeper than first blush. Caprice's primary problem is obvious: she graduated from the Academy with top honors and the second-highest scores ever seen; why has she been dumped into the worst assignment the Bureau has to offer, a field office where nothing ever happens? First impressions are that this is an "edification" lesson to counteract her somewhat brash attitude and her solution is to dig her way out by demonstrating her competence, but first impressions are often wrong.

Emergencies come in many different flavors. Caprice's starts out personal and soon becomes political. Eventually, the crisis will rise to one that threatens the entire solar system, then get turned inside out, as good books will do.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I guess I just don't think in these same terms. I think of the crisis at the end of the chapter as a cliffhanger, which is perhaps the same thing as a crisis at the end of the chapter but means something different to me as I think of it.

"Needing a crisis to keep the reader going" sounds like you're inventing something entirely new, which is perhaps just my weird perspective.

Or maybe it's just set in terms that sound much more manipulative than I like to think of the story-writing process.

Hm.