Progress Report #7 – I’m Out of Breath

For the last month, in between bouts of dealing with Sharon and her impatience and temperament, I've been editing my 120,000 word novel, Elk River. Cleaning up the story, tenses, POVs, and the sorting of characters. Then, you get into a funk and begin to ask questions, such as:

1. Does this thing even have a plot – a quick review and it does conform to Aristotle, Freytag and every other believer in “systems?” So check that off; yet you wonder.
2. Verbs and tenses, holy smokes, did I really say that!
3. Point of View (POV), how many can be held in a paragraph, let me show you the way? It’s getting better, but still more cleaning up to go.
4. Characters, how many is enough, ten, twenty, first tier, second, walkons? Hell, I don’t know, but once you get to know them their nice people, except for that evil giant and his black dog.

This is a story of the 1950s, a hard summer, a young man, hot Michigan days, cherries and migrant workers, families that are challenged, players lost and a love that can’t be discussed. If there’s an agent out there, drop me a line.

I had to finish this next edit before I could get my head back into the 4 Death world of Sharon O’Mara and the shenanigans of the uber-rich and uber evil. And uber is the working language of the villains, it’s all just so uber-cool.

I have pinned on my wall, just over my computer, the schedule I posted six weeks ago, I’m now six weeks ahead of the schedule, and I feel a push coming on. As I posted last week, Act One is done, on to Act Two, Freytag calls for plots to have five acts:

• Exposition
• Rising action
• Climax
• Falling Action
• Denouement

Sounds very racy to me (or a weekend in Las Vegas), but this is a structure that seems to work well and is based Aristotle’s Poetics, but then again the Greek lived 2500 years ago. I’ll leave the lecturing to people more learned than I. Me; I just want to tell a good story, so Toulouse 4 Death continues.

The marketing grind continues, our publishing company is trying to build a business model that will work within the brave new world of publishing for the Independent and self-publisher. As we develop ideas I’ll throw a few out there for your opinion and comment, if you have any thoughts, drop me a line.

More later . . .