J. Allen Wolfrum's Blog, page 4

The Paperback Is Out -- Winter in San Diego

Quick Book Update

If you were waiting for the paperback version of Selected, it's available on Amazon, you can get it here

For those that have read the book, I am eternally grateful, and I hope you enjoyed it.  The next one will be even better, I promise.   When you have some spare time, please leave a review on Amazon.  It's the best way to help other readers find the book.

Lazy Week

This was a bit of a lazy week in terms of reading and writing.  Have no fear, all is well at the Catranch.  Rich and Pam have been enjoying the relatively cool weather and lounging by the fireplace.

In lieu of going through he motions on the traditional reading, writing, and life sections, below is a preview chapter of the sequel to Selected.  Don't worry there are no spoilers, this chapter is likely going to get left on the cutting room floor.  I wrote it to get a better feel for what will propel the storyline of the sequel.  Enjoy.

-jerad

 

Preview Chapter - Mr. Anderson and General LeMae

 Mr. Anderson strolled through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on a sunny Friday afternoon.  He walked into the Shakespeare Garden section of the park and took the time to admire the green grass and chirping birds.  Fifty yards in front of him he spotted the man he knew as Mr. White sitting on a park bench.  Mr. White’s real name is Brad Turner, the brother of the President of the United States, Susan Turner.

Mr. Anderson sat down on the bench next to Mr. White and asked, “What did you find out about General LeMae?”

Mr. White raised his eyebrows, “you could have at least attempted to make some small talk about the weather.”  He paused, Mr. Anderson continued his cold stare.

Mr. White continued, “Alrighty then.  As you suggested, I started by scanning his cabin in Idaho.  I found a flash drive with what appears to be research on you and Pacific International’s contracts with the United States government and foreign countries.”

Mr. Anderson interrupted, “What kind of research are we talking about?”

Mr. White shrugged his shoulders, “It’s laid out chronologically, each year is organized in it’s own folder.  The folders start the year you resigned your commission from Army.  The documents span from the time of your son’s death in Afghanistan and go all the way through your rise to CEO at Pacific International.  The last document is dated six months ago.”

Mr. Anderson stared down at the green grass for a moment and let the silence linger.

He turned his attention back to Mr. White, “What specifically is in the documents?”

“Mostly it contains copies of Pacific International’s government contracts.  Also there are copies of contracts from every company Pacific International has done businesses with in the past.”

Mr. Anderson pursed his lips and nodded, “Do you have the flash drive?”

“I do.  But I haven’t got to the most interesting part yet.  There is a network diagram showing the relationships between Pacific International, the United States, foreign countries, and all corporations Pacific International has done business with in the past.”  Mr. White paused before continuing, “There are also scanned copies of handwritten notes from General LeMae.  Based on the notes it doesn’t appear he has drawn any conclusions but he is circling around the idea of collusion between Pacific International, the United States and several foreign governments.”

“Anything else I need to know?”, asked Mr. Anderson.

“Yes.  After General LeMae met with you at your house, he went directly to the White House.  I don’t know what happened in the White House but he left that evening in the Presidential motorcade.”

Mr. Anderson tapped his finger on the bench, “Good work.”

“That’s all I have for now,” Mr. White handed the flash drive to Mr. Anderson.  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but General LeMae certainly has more copies of this data.”

Mr. Anderson folded his hands on his lap and stared out into the park. “General LeMae needs to be eliminated.  Do you want the job?”

Mr. White took a moment before answering.

“What’s the time frame?”

“As soon as possible.”

“I need three weeks.”

“Why? You’ve had him under surveillance for the last two months.  You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming.”

“He’s a four star General, not exactly an easy target.”

“Fine.  And I need all copies of those files destroyed.”

Mr. Anderson abruptly stood up and walked away.

 

Mr. Anderson began to sweat as he walked through the park on the way back to his car.  In he car he dialed the Chief Scientist for The Enlightenment Project. While the phone rang, he cursed the Bay Area traffic, chauffeur service was not an option for this trip.  Mr. Anderson was the only person not involved in the experiments that knew the location of the laboratory.  Keeping it that way was essential to the success of the project and the future of the human race.

The speaker inside the car came alive, “This is Dr. Fielding.”

“Dr. Fielding, this is Mr. Anderson, I will be at the lab in forty five minutes.  Please be ready to share the current status of the experiment.  I’m especially interested in the progress on the antidote.”

“Yes sir.  I’ll have a summary prepared to discuss upon your arrival.”

“Thank you Dr. Fielding,” Mr. Anderson ended the call.

Mr. Anderson parked outside of an unmarked gray building in the Industrial District on the East Side of Oakland.  He walked to the side of the building, scanned his badge and entered the building.  The hallway was wide with cream colored walls and fluorescent lights.  The hallway had the creepy feeling of the waiting room in a doctor’s office.

Mr. Anderson continued walking, he heard the metallic clunk of a deadbolt unlocking.  Dr. Fielding stepped into the hallway.

“Mr. Anderson, thank you for visiting the research center.”  He motioned with his right arm towards the open doorway, “please follow me.”

Mr. Anderson followed Dr. Fielding into a medium sized conference room with no windows.  The main table at the center of the room had twelve chairs and a television screen on the wall at the far end of the room.  Dr. Fielding projected his laptop onto the screen.

“Please have a seat, can I get you anything? Coffee, water?”, asked Dr. Fielding.

“No thank you.”

“Alright, then I’ll get started with the presentation.”

Mr. Anderson raised his hand, “Dr. Fielding, I appreciate you putting together a presentation for me, but I’d rather hear the progress from you.  Do you mind just giving me an informal update without the slides?”

Dr. Fielding stuttered, “Ummm … yes sir … I … I can do that.”

Mr. Anderson smiled, “Thank you.”  He looked Dr. Fielding in the eye, “Dr. Fielding, there’s no reason to be nervous.  We’re all friends here.”  He paused, “So, how have things been going?”

Dr. Fielding took a deep breath and exhaled.  “Well, things have actually been going very well.  As you remember from our last update we have moved on from children to adult subjects.  We were able to replicate the success with children on adults.  The only difference is that adults need to be exposed to the materials more frequently to maintain effectiveness over time.”

Mr. Anderson smiled, “What about the antidote?”

Dr. Fielding sighed, “There are some complications.  Based on our initial round of testing, the antidote does not appear to be effective on approximately ten percent of the population.”

Mr. Anderson interrupted, “But to be clear, you were able to create an antidote?”

Dr. Fielding nodded, “Ohh yes.  The antidote has proven effective.  The patients that do not respond to the antidote all have the same genetic markers.”

“So … in theory you could know in advance whether or not the antidote would be effective on a specific person?”

“Yes.  The test is quite simple, we just need a sample of their DNA.”

“When will the materials be ready for widespread distribution to the public?”

Dr. Fielding slightly pulled back in his chair, “we’re still having same problems with controlling patient’s reactions after exposure … but we’re close to solving the problem.”

Mr. Anderson nodded, “Good.”  He locked eyes with Dr. Fielding.  “Distribution to the public will begin in thirty days.”

“But sir … we haven’t discussed a distribution method … or if we can control reactions to the virus.  What we’ve done is only an experiment.”

Mr. Anderson put his hand up.  “Dr. Fielding, let me worry about those details.  You agree that the work you’re doing will result in a better world for your children?”

Dr. Fielding nodded, “I do.”

Mr. Anderson stood up, “then let me worry about the details.  History will remember you as a hero.”

 

 

 

 

Winston Churchill the Painter

Book Release Updates

I’m expecting the final proof of the paperback book to arrive by the end of the week, assuming all goes well, the paperback version of the book will be available on Amazon in two weeks.

I have one small favor to ask for those who have read the book, please leave a review on Amazon.  Leaving a review on Amazon is the best thing you can do to  help other readers find the book. Thank you.

Reading

I finished All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I appreciate his style and wit, the storytelling, not so much.  It was enough to keep me interested but I wouldn’t say that I’m excited about reading the next book in the trilogy. Maybe I just didn’t pick up on the deeper meaning of the book.

Over the weekend, I picked up my copy of Either/Or by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The first few pages were rough, I’m not sure how far I’ll make it.  More to come next week.

I also finished watching the Netflix series The Crown, Jon Lithgow steals the show with his portrayal of Winston Churchill.  Churchill is portrayed as an aging, grumpy and wise Prime Minister. My favorite Churchill moment is toward the end of the series, Winston Churchill is painting a landscape of a pond at his house, his wife walks up from behind him and asks, “Are you winning?” In response, Churchill grumbled something about brush strokes and went back to painting. A biography of Winston Churchill is on my reading list.

Writing

I made some solid progress on the next book.  I wrote one chapter and did some story planning.  There’s a lot of questions from Selected that need to get answered in the sequel.  Planning out the preliminary answers to those questions took more thinking than I anticipated. I’m feeling burned out on the planning pieces, back to writing this week.

Life

Life at the Catranch was relatively quiet this week.  Rich and Pam are both doing well and enjoying their new string. They don’t have much interest in fancy cat toys, a string and a box have more appeal to them.  We visited some neighbors this weekend and they have a tri-level cat tree with fake leaves and branches integrated into the cat tree. Rich and Pam may need an upgrade to their cat tree in the near future.

We got a chance to visit with several friends and neighbors over the weekend.  It was great to spend some time with them, we don’t do it often enough.

More to come next week.

-jerad

A Theatrical Performance by Pamela and Richard

Reading

I got a chance to dive deeper into All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, the first fifteen pages are rough, but it’s worth the effort to keep going. I made it about a hundred pages into the book and there are a few fantastic lines that are on par with the wit of Oscar Wilde. A gem from page twenty-four, a father talking to his son, “Your mother and me never agreed on a whole lot. She liked horses. I thought that was enough. That’s how dumb I was.” Written by a man who has been divorced three times. Not exactly words to live by, but about as real as it gets.

Writing

In the past month I wrote eight chapters of the sequel to Selected. I’m tentatively calling it Plan B.  Working on the sequel is a great way to keep my mind occupied while going through the copy-editing, cover art and publishing process. Most of the chapters I wrote for the sequel are background story about the main characters: Mr. Anderson, Rebecca Sanders, Brad Turner, and General LeMae. They may or may not make it into the final draft but writing those chapters was a great way to get my brain thinking about the characters and the roles they play in the next book.

The sequel will be told from the perspective of FBI Agent Rebecca Sanders, who was responsible for investigating Mason Adams in Selected. The backstory of Susan’s brother, Brad Turner will be revealed.  We’ll also get to find out just how far Mr. Anderson will go to pursue his goal of Unified Peace and what it will take to stop him.

I’m excited to start consistently writing again and I don’t want to give away too much. More to come.

Not to get too far ahead of myself, but If you’ve already read Selected, it’s clear that there needs to be a prequel describing how the United States got to the point where we no longer elect the President, Senate and Congress. I promise, that book is coming, I have to keep reminding myself, one thing at a time.

Lots of fun stuff on the horizon.

Life

Some friends of ours and their kids dropped by this weekend.  We played with chickens, walked to the lake, and groomed a horse. A pretty awesome Saturday morning.

On the flipside, we all learned that Pam is not a fan of small humans running at her with outstretched hands.  Who would have guessed? But it’s all good, Pam and Rich politely excused themselves from the situation and everyone went along with their day.

I’m proud to announce that the Catranch is home to a new theatrical play, written and performed by Pam and Rich daily at approximately 5:45pm in the living room of the Catranch. Pam and Rich have yet to give their masterpiece a name.

The opening act of the play begins with Rich sitting on the couch at my feet and eventually moving to my lap.  He pretends like he wants to be petted but really he’s looking for the smallest inclination that I might move toward the refrigerator. At the same time Pam runs from the cat tree to the front door while meowing, or as we refer to it here at the Catranch, singing the song of her people.  Occasionally, she bangs on the front door with her paws to let the humans occupying her home know that she’s ready to eat. The opening act tends to last approximately five minutes and quickly moves to act two.

The second act of the play begins with Rich heading towards the sliding glass door at the back of the kitchen. About a minute later, Pam follows.  She sits next to Rich for a few seconds then moves between Rich and the door.  This begins the fake standoff between Rich and Pam.  They stare at each other with mad face for a brief moment.  Rich starts the action by raising a paw toward Pam in slow motion, as if he was going to swat her.  This causes Pam to hiss at him. At this point, I move my foot slightly on the couch, Rich and Pam both sprint toward me. When they realize that I’m not going to feed them yet, because their dinner time is 6pm, they repeat the fake standoff scenario.

At 6:00pm the play ends with dinner time at the Catranch.

Speaking of which, this evening’s performance is about to begin.

Signing off from the Catranch.

-jerad

 

Books, Chickens, Salmon Tacos, and SoCal Sunshine

Book Release Update

 

This week I self-published my book Selected on Amazon.  Currently, it’s only available as an eBook, the paperback version should be available in the next month or so.

You can find the eBook on Amazon here.

If you already picked up a copy, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed it.  Please leave a rating and review on Amazon, it helps other readers who might be interested in the book find it on Amazon.

Reading

Busy week all around, not much reading happened.

We went on a road trip this weekend to visit family and listened to the new Dan Brown book, Origin on Audible. I have to preface my reaction by saying that I’m a huge fan of Davinci Code and Angels and Demons. I was expecting Origin to be equally as engaging, but it just didn’t get there.

I started reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. This is my first time reading anything by Cormac McCarthy, I was scared off by his books that were turned into movies.  I don’t like horror or scary movies, so I stayed away from his writing.  

I’m glad I picked up All the Pretty Horses, his writing style is interesting and has two distinct elements: no quotation marks around dialogue and very long sentences when he’s describing a scene.  The lack of quotation marks is a little shocking at first but after ten pages or so I got used to it.  I haven’t made it far enough into the book to have an opinion on the story structure.  His descriptions of people and their surroundings are awesome.  I’m looking forward to making it farther into the book.

Writing

No real writing this week.  My goal is to not write that sentence again next week.  I spent a lot of time this week trying to get the book published.  I did set up a goodreads author account and answered a bunch of questions which you can see on my profile here.  If you have a question you want me to answer, feel free to ask.

Life

We had the opportunity to spend some time with family this week and it was great.

At the house, we have three chickens, one mama chicken and two babies.  The babies are about four months old.  The mama chicken started laying eggs again this week and one of her baby chickens followed suit. We’re back to having fresh eggs for breakfast again.

We went on two short hikes this weekend that made us appreciate the Southern California weather.  Hiking the foothills in a t-shirt on New Years day is one of many things that make dealing with the people and traffic tolerable.

Rich and Pam held down the Catranch in our absence.  They were happy to get back to their normal routine and rated our new salmon tacos recipe, four out of four paws with a hearty meow.

Speaking of ratings, if you’re reading the book, when you’re finished, please leave a rating and review on Amazon.  It’s the best way to help other readers find the book.

More to come next week, signing off from the Catranch.

-jerad

Sherlock and a Sunny Christmas with Exploding Kittens

Reading

I finished reading Where the Long Grass Grows by Louis L’Amour and started a compilation of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The first story is titled, A Study in Scarlet, which describes how Dr. John Watson met Sherlock Holmes for the first time.

In their initial meeting, Sherlock Holmes deduces that Dr. Watson had recently returned from military service in Afghanistan.  The story was written in 1887, and Mark Twain said it best--history might not repeat but it certainly rhymes.

As I was reading, my thoughts kept wandering towards the Sherlock TV series on BBC. It’s hard to read the original stories without replacing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s description of Sherlock with Bernard Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock in the BBC TV series.  My plan is to finish reading A Study in Scarlet before picking up another book.  The original Sherlock Holmes stories are great but I don’t think I can make it through all four in a row.

Writing

Lots of unanticipated work on the book this week. The changes keep getting smaller and more focused which seems like a good thing. I read through each chapter again, made a few small editorial changes and added a chapter at the end of the book. I think adding the short chapter at the end of the book will give readers an opportunity to take a breath after the final action scene and it emphasizes the controlling idea of the book, justice prevails when heroes sacrifice their personal ego for the greater good.

The final step before publishing the book to Amazon is the cover art, which should be complete at the end of this week.

My goal is to get my first book, Selected, published on Amazon by the first week of January.

I also spent some time going over the first few chapters of my next book, which I’m tentatively calling, Plan B.

In the first few chapters I wrote, I tried to shove in a bunch of back story from the perspectives of characters that don’t continue throughout the book. Scrapping those chapters isn’t a total loss, it gave me the opportunity to think through the story line.

Life

Lots of action at the Catranch this week. A Christmas tree in the house means new smells and fun toys for Richard and Pamela. Pam thinks the water in the tree stand is the bee’s knees. Rich wants the bacon scraps from Christmas breakfast integrated into his daily diet.

We spent Saturday in La Jolla, walking around town and at the beach. It doesn’t seem like Christmas time when you’re wearing a flip flops and sunglasses at the beach. Not a complaint, just an observation, I’ll take sunny SoCal over a snow storm and sub zero weather any day.

On our way back from the La Jolla tide pools, we wandered into a used bookstore and I found a copy of The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy. I’m excited to start reading it after I finish the Sherlock Holmes story.

The week ended with a visit from friends who introduced us to the Exploding Kittens card game.  It’s similar to Cards Against Humanity and made by the creator of The Oatmeal website. We had a lot of fun playing, it doesn’t require an overwhelming amount of thought and the rules are simple, defuse the exploding kitten, or you lose.

 

P.S.

Thanks for making it this far into my rambling. Hang in there, I promise these posts will get better as time goes on. I’ll eventually find a rhythm that works.

-jerad

Struggling Through Point of View

Reading

This week I spent some time reading, Point of View by Sandra Gerth.  The copy-editor who worked on my first novel recommended it to me.  The book does an excellent job of providing rules and examples for dealing with point of view in your writing.  The book is great and for $2 you can’t go wrong.

I read a few more pages in my Louis L’Amour novel. The main character just met the complicated and elusive love interest. She's engaged to the man trying to kill the protagonist. From now on, I’ll be reading with an extra sharp eye for how Louis L'Amour handles point of view in his books.

Writing

This week writing took up the majority of my free time. I did a lot more editing than writing this week.  I think I finally uploaded the final version of the book interior to createspace. But I probably said that last week, so we’ll see.  I fixed a solid fifteen or twenty point of view issues in the manuscript. Mostly small issues where I added in a sentence from another character's point of view. I like the changes and I think they'll make the book much more enjoyable for readers.

By the grace of a higher power I made it through the majority of my first novel without making too many point of view errors. While fixing the errors in my first book, I realized that I am going down a very bad path with my new book. The Sandra Gerth book on Point of View came to me at a good time. Stay in the game and do the work, the knowledge will come when it's needed.

Life

Two words. Christmas Cards. This year we decided to venture into adulthood and send out Christmas cards to friends and family. Instead of a traditional holiday card with a picture, we chose to write a letter describing our year and included a few photos. We borrowed the ideas from one of our friends did something similar last year.  We thought it was a great alternative to social media for letting the people we care about know what’s going on in our life.

The Catranch is rolling strong. Rich and Pam were pumped about their tuna fish dessert.

-jerad

Still Relevant After 81 Years

Reading

This week I finished reading Sinclair Lewis’s novel, It Can’t Happen Here; which was published in 1936.  Lewis describes a scenario where the United States turns from a Democracy to a Dictatorship within a few years.  In the book he references the Nazi’s and Hitler’s rise to power multiple times. The amount of foresight Sinclair had to make the connection from the Nazi party of 1936 to the horrific crimes against humanity that they would eventually commit is astounding.

I’m no historian but just looking at the timeline, Lewis was far ahead of the world’s leaders in understanding how dangerous Hitler and the Nazi’s could become.  Think about this, Hitler was the Time Magazine Man of the Year in January of 1939.  Three years after Sinclair’s book was published, the rest of world had not yet caught onto how dangerous the situation in Germany had become.

Looking back on the historical events of World War II, it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback and pontificate about what could have been done.  Lewis saw it coming, in real time.

The book itself covers a ton of ground and makes for a good read.  It follows a newspaper editor from Vermont, Dormeus Jessup as he lives through the new dictatorship.  I won’t spoil any of the storytelling but the first half of the book was eerily reminiscent of the current political landscape.

 

I picked a Louis L’Amour novel off the bookshelf this weekend, Where the Long Grass Blows.  I’m only a few pages into it but Louis L’Amour never disappoints.  I grew up reading Louis L’Amour cowboy novels and still smile every time I read one. How can you not love the lonesome, caring, honest and battle hardened cowboy who rides into a strange town.

Writing

A big week in writing for me. I received my manuscript back from the copy-editor on Friday.  She’s freakin’ amazing. This is my first attempt at writing anything other than bullets in power point presentations, so I was nervous about her feedback. Reading through the copy-editing notes and changes taught me a lot about the common grammatical traps that I consistently fall into. The copy-editing notes and changes definitely improved the overall quality of my book.

I spent most of the weekend making last minute changes and formatting the paperback version of the manuscript for printing.  Next step is finding an artist for the front and back cover art work.  The end is near.

Life

Nothing much to report here at the Cat Ranch. I spent most of the weekend hunkered down and working through the copy-edit changes for the book.

Pam and Rich are doing good and enjoying their new cat food. No major updates.  It’s all about trying to fight through the resistance and get the book out into the world.

How I Use Story Grid - Writing a Scene

Before I get started, I want to be clear, I am in no way associated with Shawn Coyne, the creator of Story Grid or Tim Grahl from the Story Grid podcast.  The work they’ve done with the book and the podcast has been immensely valuable to me and I want to share how I’ve used their work in my writing process.

If you haven’t done so already, check out the Story Grid book and the Story Grid podcast.

Alright let’s get to it.

By far the most influential lesson I’ve learned from the podcast :

The Scene is the fundamental building block that an aspiring writer needs to master.  

Those might not be Shawn's exact words but they’re close.  I remember listening to Shawn say it on the podcast and the message immediately resonated with me.    At the time I heard the podcast I had not yet started writing.  This statement was one of the stepping stones I used to muster up the courage to start writing.  My thought process at the time was; if I can write a scene, then I can write sixty scenes and if I write sixty scenes, I wrote a book.  Yes, I’m totally ignoring the other story structure concepts but for me it was a starting point.  Learn to write a good scene and build a story from there.

What’s a Scene and how do I write one?

A scene is 1,500 to 2,000 words and it contains the Five Commandments of Storytelling: an inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis (a decision that must be made), climax (the decision that was made), and a resolution.

Planning the Scene

When I sit down to write, I have one goal for the day, write a scene.  Before I start writing I outline the scene.  I literally write down the 5 Commandments and fill them in with a decent amount of detail.  I label them with numbers 1-5, 1 is the inciting incident, 2 is progressive complication, etc.  It's not always pretty as you'll see below but it gets me thinking in detail about what is going to happen in the scene.

5 Commandments Outline Example

It isn’t pretty but this is a copy/paste from the Notes section of Scrivener for Chapter 3 of my next book.

1. Brad meets with his contact inside the Lab. He's an admin assistant, doesn't know exactly what's going on but something is happening in 30 days.

1. General LeMae walks out of the grocery store and finds an envelope on his windshield.

2. The envelope contains a simple message and a flash drive. It looks like the flash drive he hid in his Idaho Cabin. The message reads "you're on the right track. Anderson is rattled. Time is short.

3. Does he investigate himself? Tell Susan (President Turner)?

4. He goes straight to Ariana Redmond. He does this because it might be nothing. and doesn't want susan involved..or it might be huge in which case he has to do something. He doesn't want to stick Susan with the problem. The right place is FBI. Ariana will do something. He tells her that he's concerned about Pacific International's involvement in last year's incident with the Soviet Union. They have been pushing their influence around the world and have recently acquired three biological research companies. The owners of those companies are all tied together.

Commandment #5 is missing from my notes because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen so I left it blank. And I have two Commandment #1's.  

Writing the outline made me realize that I was trying to do multiple things in this scene.  So I had some problems to overcome and if I'm being completely honest with myself, I'm not convinced I solved them in the best way.  The full scene is below, you can judge for yourself.  Would the ending scene pass Shawn's "work/doesn't work" test?  Mehh, probably not, but it's the best I've got at this stage of writing the first draft.

I’m a Writer not an Accountant, this is too formulaic. Where’s the creativity?

This method isn’t going to resonate with everyone.  From my perspective the 5 Commandments outline is the pre-work for writing a scene.  It starts the creative engine and gives it a direction and some rules.  For me, when I write the outline, I try to put in just enough detail to get me thinking about the characters and raise the more interesting questions.

For example:

1. Brad meets with his contact inside the Lab. He's an admin assistant, doesn't know exactly what's going on but something is happening in 30 days.

Based on this inciting incident in the outline, I still need to figure out who Brad’s contact is inside the lab, where they meet and what he tells Brad about the plan.  At this point I only have a cloudy notion of what “the plan” is, so I need to figure what Brad’s contact actually saw.

Still plenty of creative decisions to be made

Brad’s decision to contact General LeMae happens off the page.  The reader finds out after General LeMae has already decided to contact the FBI Director Ariana Redmond and the decision that happens on the page is that Ariana Redmond decides to assign FBI Agents to the case.  

The reason I made that decision is that the protagonist is one of the FBI Agents assigned to the case.  This scene is in the beginning hook and I’m trying to get the protagonist into the story as soon as possible but I need some backstory first. The story will kick into another gear once the protagonist makes it onto the page.

All of these decisions I made could be done in a different way.  And I have no doubt there are many other more interesting ways to approach the story but this one is mine.

When I finish this book, if I gave another writer the Global Foolscap and 5 Commandment Outlines for every scene in the book and they used those documents to re-write the book, it would be completely different than my version.  Maybe better, maybe worse, but most definitely different.

Outlining and planning do not take the creativity out of writing.

The Scene that came from the outline

Below is the raw and unedited scene that I wrote based on the outline above.

---------------------------------

Brad Turner met Keith in a crowded San Francisco coffee shop.  

Brad sat down across from Keith and abruptly began the conversation, “breaking our meeting protocol is dangerous.  What’s so urgent?”

Keith shook the table with the nervous bounce in his left leg.  “Something is going to happen on May 31st.”

Brad increased his focus, “What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know.  But every project deadline in the lab got bumped up to May 31st.”

Brad leaned forward, “Have you seen any new people in the lab?”

Keith shook his head, “No.  They don’t let me anywhere near the experiments.  I told you before, I don’t even know what they’re doing.  I’m just the accountant.  The Doctors…well I think they’re Doctors … they look nervous, like they’re not sleeping.  Then when I was told to change all the project deadlines to May 31st … I don’t know.  I just thought you should know.  Something isn’t right.”

“Understood.  You did the right thing by reaching out.  If you see anything else out of the ordinary let me know.”

Brad got up from his chair and left Keith alone at the table with his coffee and untouched blueberry muffin.  He walked back to his hotel room and sat down at his laptop.  He pulled up the files from General LeMae’s flash drive.  May 31st was only twenty nine days away.  In his previous analysis of the files, nothing indicated that Jack Anderson and Pacific International were close to an end game.  The files showed the exact opposite, a very carefully planned network of connections that took over two decades to construct.  Two questions kept recurring as he combed through the files from General LeMae’s flash drive, What is Jack Anderson planning?  And why May 31st?

 

General LeMae sat by himself in a conference room inside the FBI headquarters building.  He opened his briefcase and set a plain white envelope on the table.  He stared at the envelope and silently rehearsed the pitch in his head.  Thirty seconds later the door opened and the Director of the FBI, Ariana Redmond walked into the room alone.  General LeMae caught a glimpse of the two FBI Agents who escorted her to the meeting.  Before saying a word or acknowledging his presence, Ariana flipped two switches on the wall.  The first switch blacked out the windows to the conference room.  General LeMae assumed the second switch either turned on audio and video recording equipment in the conference room, or turned it off.  Both were reasonable.

General LeMae stood up, walked towards Ariana Redmond and extended his hand with a smile, “I don’t believe we’ve met … Curtis LeMae, nice to meet you Ma’am.”

Ariana Redmond showed no expression on her face, she shook his hand, “Ariana Redmond, nice to meet you.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about you from the Pentagon and the President.”

General LeMae chuckled, “That’s very nice of you Ma’am, you must have ran into my fan club.”

Ariana Redmond let a smile creep out from the corner of her mouth, “Must have.  But that’s not why you asked to speak with me.  What would you like to talk about?”

General LeMae took a deep breath and they both sat down at the conference room table.  “For the last few years, I’ve been looking into connections between the CEO of Pacific International, Jack Anderson, and several foreign governments.  To this point, the work has been done completely off the books.  It started as just a hunch.”

Ariana Redmond prompted him, “OK, so I assume you have more than a hunch or else we wouldn’t be talking.”

General LeMae raised his eyebrows, “It’s more than a hunch but definitely short of concrete evidence.”

Ariana Redmond gestured for him to continue.

“Jack Anderson and I were classmates at West Point.  He was a good soldier.  Then his son was killed in Afghanistan.  I don’t know what happened to him, but he changed.  He resigned his commission and went to work for Pacific International.  I would see him around the Pentagon every once in awhile, nothing suspicious.  I kept an eye on him because I would consistently see him with businessmen that had less than stellar reputations.  You know ... the creepy … I’ll do anything for money and power types.  As Jack Anderson moved up the ranks, Pacific International continued to expand.  The types of companies they were buying made them seem more like a Government than a private company.  Does that make sense?”

Ariana Redmond shrugged, “What I’m hearing is … a friend of yours gave up the Army and became a very successful and powerful businessman.”

General LeMae nodded, “Yes, exactly.  I’m concerned because it’s completely out of character for Jack and I don’t understand why he’s doing it.  He certainly isn’t doing it for money or fame.”

Ariana Redmond’s patience wore thin and showed on her face, “I’m not seeing how this is something the FBI should be concerned about.”

“Do you remember the security convoy incident with the Soviet Union last year that almost caused World War III?  The confidential information leaked out of the White House?  The sudden death of Soviet President Rosinski? … all of those incidents are linked back to Jack Anderson.”

“Do you have any evidence?”

“Of course I do, but it’s all circumstantial.”

Ariana Redmond opened her hands in frustration, “General LeMae, I really appreciate you bringing this matter to my attention, but there isn’t anything I can do with circumstantial evidence.”  She pushed her chair back from the table.

General LeMae remained seated and opened the envelope, “Yes I know.  That’s why I didn’t come to you sooner.”

Ariana crossed her arms and remained seated, “I’m listening.”

“I stopped by Jack’s house a week ago as a friend.  I got a very strange vibe from him.  The conversation was cordial but something wasn’t right.  He asked me about my cabin in Idaho.  I bought that cabin four years ago, very few people know about it.  Jack certainly was not one of them.  I know it’s not much to go on but it gave me the feeling he was watching me.  The cabin is one of the places where I hid copies of my research on Pacific International.”  General LeMae paused to catch his breath.  “And yesterday I found this envelope on the driver's seat of my Cadillac.”

He opened the envelope, took out a plain white piece of paper and read the note,

Dear General LeMae,

Jack Anderson contracted me to kill you.  I have been watching you for three months.  I found your research on Pacific International at the cabin near Bayview, Idaho.  Your visit with Jack Anderson scared him.  His eyes have the tenacity and fear of a wounded animal.  He believes you are a threat to his agenda.  He has pushed the timeline for implementation of what he refers to as, The Solution to May 31st.  My source of information on The Solution knows very few details, only that medical doctors appear to be involved and experimentation started sixteen months ago. Jack Anderson needs to be stopped.  I’ll be in touch.

Ariana Redmond sighed, pressed the fingers on her left hand to her forehead and closed her eyes for a moment.

General LeMae cleared his throat, “Also inside the envelope was the flash drive I hid outside my cabin in Idaho.”

Ariana Redmond regained her composure, “You know that you’re putting me in a bad position right?”

“I know and that’s why I came to you instead of President Turner.”

“Again let me recap, what I heard is that there is a threat on your life and the person threatening your life appears to have information about potential domestic terrorist activity?  Is that what you’re telling me?”

General LeMae took a moment, “Yes, it is.”

“Well … that sounds like something the FBI needs to investigate.  And given that there has been a threat to a four star General’s life from an unknown person who clearly has access to Government facilities, I believe the investigation needs to be kept confidential.  I will personally oversee the investigation to ensure information is not leaked to the person threatening your life.”

General LeMae nodded, “Will you be serving as the lead investigator on the case?”

“No.  I have an Agent in mind to lead the investigation.  Due to the sensitive nature of this case, I only want a volunteer.  The Agent needs to understand the risks; physical and political.”

“Understood.”

“The Agent leading the investigation will reach out to you within the next twenty four hours.  Would you like a security detail?”

General LeMae shook his head, “No thanks.  If this guy is as good as I think he is, it won’t matter.”

Ariana Redmond stood up from her chair, “General LeMae, I’m glad we finally got the opportunity to meet.  I wish it was on better circumstances.”

General LeMae stood up and shook her hand, “Same.  Thank you Ma’am.”

 

How I Started Writing - Part 3 of 3

The first time I read The Story Grid book, the concepts immediately resonated with me.  I finally discovered a framework for writing fiction that made sense to me.  I felt it was just what I needed to get started writing.  Now that I had the Story Grid book, writing would be easy, just follow the framework that Shawn lays out in the book.  For some people maybe that’s how it works but not for me.  I sat down multiple times and tried to write and failed miserably every time.  I just couldn’t put it all together, resistance knocked me down every time.  

I gave up and stopped trying to write.  Then I heard about the Story Grid podcast on Steven Pressfield’s website.  The podcast is what really got me over the hurdle to get started writing.  For those who haven’t listened to the podcast, it is a treasure trove of advice from Shawn Coyne about storytelling and the editing process.  Tim Grahl is a new fiction writer and Shawn Coyne uses Tim’s work to illustrate the points he makes in the Story Grid book.  The podcast is amazing, I cannot recommend it enough.

The Story Grid podcast started in October 2015 and I listened on and off for the first year.  I started going to the gym in early 2017 and listened to every episode of the podcast during my morning workout.  That’s where the concepts of Story Grid started to become clear in my head.  Listening to Shawn and Tim talk about Tim’s work every morning gave me the confidence to start writing again.

I mustered up the courage to bring up the idea of writing a book to my wife.  I had an idea, “What if we didn’t have elections and the President was selected at random?”  This was right after the United States Presidential election.  My wife encouraged me to give it a try.  I talked about the idea for a few weeks and on January 30, 2017, I sat down to write Chapter One.  It was horrible, but it had the five commandments of story; an inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax and resolution.  I let my wife read the first draft of Chapter One.  After finishing the chapter, she nodded her head and said, “I want to know what happens next”.  That simple question was the encouragement I needed to keep going.  If she would have responded in a less enthusiastic way, I would have never continued.

Over the next seven months, I wrote the first and second drafts of my book, Selected.  Throughout the process of writing the book, the Story Grid book and podcast continued to be fantastic sources of information.  I would never have made it this far without the encouragement from my wife and the Story Grid.  

That’s the end of the series about how I got started writing, I’m going to continue writing a post a week about how I use the Story Grid methodology in my writing process and anything else that seems interesting.

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How I Started Writing - Part 2 of 3

After my four years in the Marine Corps, I went to college and majored in Accounting.  College was hard for me in a lot of ways.  I felt like I had nothing in common with the people around me but I did what Marines do; adapt and overcome.  I did a lot of reading in college, mostly catching up on what I should have read in high school.  I finally read Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield and loved it.  That book still sits at the top of my favorite book list.  Steven Pressfield nailed what it means to to be a warrior.  It’s about your friends to your left and right.

I made it through college and became a Certified Public Accountant.  Being an accountant is a great career for some people.  It wasn't for me, I hated it.  During the next decade, I went through a couple of career changes, met my wife, went back to school and moved to California.  During this period I discovered two more treasures from Steven Pressfield.  His non-fiction books, The War of Art and Turning Pro.  Years later when I started writing fiction, those two books helped me avoid some serious pitfalls.  

Towards the end of this period in life, I tried to write fiction a couple of times.  It went nowhere, I had no idea what I was doing and felt defeated.  I don’t generally pick up new things easily, I need some hand holding and a framework to get started.  The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne was exactly what I needed.

I distinctly remember sitting on my couch watching a video on Steven Pressfield’s website of Shawn Coyne describing his Story Grid methodology.  The logic of Shawn’s Story Grid methodology immediately resonated with me.  Before I even made it through the first video, I ordered his book The Story Grid.  That book changed my life.

I still wasn't writing yet, but the seed was planted in my brain.  More to come next week.