Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 211

The Crusie Website, It Needs Work: Part 2

So I had lunch with Mollie today, and it was great, so much fun, and one of the things we talked about was the jennycrusie.com website.  For those of you new-ish to the blog, Mollie is my business partner and also my daughter, who runs her own business keeping authors’ online identities professional and easily accessed.

You can imagine how working with me makes her insane.

I feel my website should be a party.  She feels it should be professional, easy to navigate, and above all dedicated to marketing my books.  She pointed out today that my site is a nightmare to navigate on mobile devices because of all the nesting tabs.  I said, “Is there any way we can move the WiPs to Argh and just put a link on the site, and she said, “YES!”

Then she said, “We’ll move the essays and the Everything Else and the . . .”

All of which is to say that a whole lot of content is going to disappear from the website and end up over here.  She’ll run the website like the professional she is, and I’ll get to be as random and impulsive as I want over here.  

Which means that my questions about organizing the website will, in the future, be about organizing Argh, which is already sprained from the hack.

And that means that this is a good time to weigh in on what drives you crazy about trying to get around here, what you’d like to see, and how you’d like to see it.  There’s nothing about Argh that’s professonal, not that many people know we’re here since I never promote the blog (don’t need to, no advertising so the clicks don’t matter here).  It’s just us.  

Meanwhile, now that I’m home I’m going back to my demons.  

The post The Crusie Website, It Needs Work: Part 2 appeared first on Argh Ink.

Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Escalation

 

Thank god, the math is over.

Escalation is pretty simple: the stakes get higher in each section between the turning points of the act.  So checking for escalation is just making sure the stakes increase at each turning point..  Easy  

Unless you’re an idiot who lets huge plot points  drop so your protagonist can go shopping.

Let’s look at how this truck draft escalates while I berate myself throughout this post.

 

Before the act starts, Nita goes to the crime scene to help Mort, and Nick talks to Joey about his missing agents. Those are the stable worlds for those PoV characters.

The act begins when Nita finds out Joey’s been murdered (beginning stakes) and Nick is dealing with seeing Joey get murdered (beginning stakes).

The first turning point comes when Nita sees Nick as a skeleton (but doesn’t believe it so the stakes don’t rise) and when Nick realizes that Nita isn’t completely human (so now he has to find the gate and his agents, get the guy who ordered the hit on Joey AND find out what Nita is so he’ll know if she’s a problem). Nick’s plot escalates, Nita’s doesn’t.

Rewrite Goal: Rewrite that moment when Nita sees Nick as something that raises the stakes for her.

Pushed on by that turning point, Nita goes home and somebody tries to kill her, after which she covers for Button and then goes to breakfast the next morning, mentioning it in passing to Nick and then discussing poisoned doughnuts. Nick chats with Dag and Rab with no escalation, and then finds out about the demon who tried to shoot Nita and the doughnuts. Nita goes to work and Nick eats her French toast.

This is where I banged my head on my laptop several times. You know if somebody tried to kill me at 3AM, I would still be concerned about that at 7:30AM. In fact, I would be concerned about that THE ENTIRE DAMN DAY. I might even INVESTIGATE THAT. And if I also found out that a bunch of people on my island were poisoned by doughnuts, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE THAT, TOO.

And if I’m the guy who cleans up after rogue demons and one of them tried to shoot a woman I know, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE THAT. And if I then find out that somebody is poisoning demons using the guy I liked who got murdered in front of me, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE DOUGHNUTS.

I swear to god, I did not see how incredibly stupid I’d been until I did the escalation check. This is why it’s important to see the forest, not just the trees. I’m really good at details, but big picture? Not so much.

That muttering you hear in the back ground is me, swearing at myself.

So to get back to analysis, if I’d had any brains at all, there’d have been a lot of escalation at the end of this section because both Nita and Nick would have been galvanized by the attempted assassination and the poisoned doughnuts.

Rewrite Goal: Get your head out of your ass, Jenny, and fix your damn plot holes.

So that means a massive rewrite on How Nita Spends Her Afternoon and How Nick Spends his Afternoon, although Nick at least has a great escalation at the end of this section when he finds out what Nita is and gets saddled with Mammon and Max. Nita, on the other hand, chats a lot and shops. Because she’s evidently brain dead.

Rewrite Goal: Nita tries to find out who’s poisoning doughnuts and trying to kill her. Nick tries to find that out, too. Jesus wept.

In the last section, the stakes rise for Nita because she realizes the supernatural is real. The stakes rise for Nick because he’s invested in her even if he’s not realizing it yet, and because he had to smite somebody which is a serious thing for him. That’s still a little fuzzy and needs to be tied to the whole doughnut and assassination thing in a way that shows there are two conspiracies on the island, but at least the stakes are higher at the end.

Rewrite Goal: Set up the two conspiracies somehow so that it’s clear that Nita and Nick are still concerned with the doughnuts that caused Joey’s death and the attempt on Nita’s life, all of which happened about eighteen hours ago, so still very fresh in their memories.

I can’t believe I missed something that freaking huge. I know, I know, early draft, but somebody tried to kill her and she forgot about it? Somebody poisoned the island populace (and Nita) and she let that drop?

It may be awhile before I’m back with the paper edit. Talk amongst yourselves while I go beat up on myself some more.

The post Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Escalation appeared first on Argh Ink.

Nita’s First Act Paper Edit: Escalation

 

Thank god, the math is over.

Escalation is pretty simple: the stakes get higher in each section between the turning points of the act.  So checking for escalation is just making sure the stakes increase at each turning point..  Easy  

Unless you’re an idiot who lets huge plot points  drop so your protagonist can go shopping.

Let’s look at how this truck draft escalates while I berate myself throughout this post.

 

Before the act starts, Nita goes to the crime scene to help Mort, and Nick talks to Joey about his missing agents. Those are the stable worlds for those PoV characters.

The act begins when Nita finds out Joey’s been murdered (beginning stakes) and Nick is dealing with seeing Joey get murdered (beginning stakes).

The first turning point comes when Nita sees Nick as a skeleton (but doesn’t believe it so the stakes don’t rise) and when Nick realizes that Nita isn’t completely human (so now he has to find the gate and his agents, get the guy who ordered the hit on Joey AND find out what Nita is so he’ll know if she’s a problem). Nick’s plot escalates, Nita’s doesn’t.

Rewrite Goal: Rewrite that moment when Nita sees Nick as something that raises the stakes for her.

Pushed on by that turning point, Nita goes home and somebody tries to kill her, after which she covers for Button and then goes to breakfast the next morning, mentioning it in passing to Nick and then discussing poisoned doughnuts. Nick chats with Dag and Rab with no escalation, and then finds out about the demon who tried to shoot Nita and the doughnuts. Nita goes to work and Nick eats her French toast.

This is where I banged my head on my laptop several times. You know if somebody tried to kill me at 3AM, I would still be concerned about that at 7:30AM. In fact, I would be concerned about that THE ENTIRE DAMN DAY. I might even INVESTIGATE THAT. And if I also found out that a bunch of people on my island were poisoned by doughnuts, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE THAT, TOO.

And if I’m the guy who cleans up after rogue demons and one of them tried to shoot a woman I know, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE THAT. And if I then find out that somebody is poisoning demons using the guy I liked who got murdered in front of me, I MIGHT INVESTIGATE DOUGHNUTS.

I swear to god, I did not see how incredibly stupid I’d been until I did the escalation check. This is why it’s important to see the forest, not just the trees. I’m really good at details, but big picture? Not so much.

That muttering you hear in the back ground is me, swearing at myself.

So to get back to analysis, if I’d had any brains at all, there’d have been a lot of escalation at the end of this section because both Nita and Nick would have been galvanized by the attempted assassination and the poisoned doughnuts.

Rewrite Goal: Get your head out of your ass, Jenny, and fix your damn plot holes.

So that means a massive rewrite on How Nita Spends Her Afternoon and How Nick Spends his Afternoon, although Nick at least has a great escalation at the end of this section when he finds out what Nita is and gets saddled with Mammon and Max. Nita, on the other hand, chats a lot and shops. Because she’s evidently brain dead.

Rewrite Goal: Nita tries to find out who’s poisoning doughnuts and trying to kill her. Nick tries to find that out, too. Jesus wept.

In the last section, the stakes rise for Nita because she realizes the supernatural is real. The stakes rise for Nick because he’s invested in her even if he’s not realizing it yet, and because he had to smite somebody which is a serious thing for him. That’s still a little fuzzy and needs to be tied to the whole doughnut and assassination thing in a way that shows there are two conspiracies on the island, but at least the stakes are higher at the end.

Rewrite Goal: Set up the two conspiracies somehow so that it’s clear that Nita and Nick are still concerned with the doughnuts that caused Joey’s death and the attempt on Nita’s life, all of which happened about eighteen hours ago, so still very fresh in their memories.

I can’t believe I missed something that freaking huge. I know, I know, early draft, but somebody tried to kill her and she forgot about it? Somebody poisoned the island populace (and Nita) and she let that drop?

It may be awhile before I’m back with the paper edit. Talk amongst yourselves while I go beat up on myself some more.

The post Nita’s First Act Paper Edit: Escalation appeared first on Argh Ink.

Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Pacing

 

And now we come to the math portion of our program.

I put all the pieces of the truck draft together in one file and checked the word count: 41,067.  This is a fine word count for a book that’s 120,000 words long, but this one is aiming for 100,000.  So I need to ax about 6,000 to 8000 words in the Paper Edit.  And not just any words, I need to ax for pacing.  Argh.

As some of you may recall, acts in a story in Crusie world must get shorter as the story progresses to escalate the action.  In the same way, sections of an act need to get shorter as the act progresses.  So I looked at the word counts on the sections of the draft you just suffered through with me, and thought about act turning points.

From the beginning to the first turning point, when the demon tries to shoot Nita in her house, it’s 16500 words.

From there to the Point of No Return when Nita leaves the diner no longer seeing Nick as the enemy, is another 7000 words.

From there to the crisis at Motel Styx is 13,000 words.

And from the crisis to the climax on Demon Head is 4500 words.  

That’s a mess. 

Let’s say I’m shooting for 32,000 to 35,000 words for this first act, about a third of the book which is what my first acts run, and I need each section to get smaller.  That would give me, very roughly, sections that are 12000, 10000, 8000, 5000.  I say very roughly because the big thing is that they get noticeably smaller not that they hit a particular word count.  

So I have 16500 instead of 12000 and 7000 instead of 10000 in the section before the Point of No Return.  That’s 23500 words instead of the 22000 (12000/10000) I’m aiming for so that’s actually not bad.  The problem is the turning point is in the wrong place.  I’m still going to cut the hell out of it on the paper edit, but it’s not egregiously off.   Even better, Part One (the Nick and Nita parallel scenes) and Part Two (the scene sequence in the bar) naturally come out to about 12000 words.  Even better than that, that’s naturally where Nick’s Things Get Worse is because that’s where Nita recovers from the scupper which tips him that she’s not human.  And that’s also where Nita sees him as a skeleton; the problem there is that she thinks she’s hallucinating so it’s not a TGW for her.

Rewrite Goal: Somehow create a Things Get Worse for Nita at the end of the bar scene sequence.

Shifting Nita’s turning point shifts the word count distribution to 12000/11500, which means I need to get rid of about 1500 words in the double scene sequence and breakfast scene..  The good news is that we already know that double sequence drags at 8000 words, and the breakfast scene is way too long at 3500 words.  So while that’s a lot of cutting, I already knew that was in the cards.  .

Rewrite Goal: Cut the hell (1500-3000 words) out of that draggy double scene sequence and the breakfast scene.

Then that throws me into the section between the Point of No Return and the Crisis (Parts Five and Six) which should be about 8000 words tops.  It’s 13,000 freaking words.  I think Nita goes shopping in there.  Argh.  That’s going to be a bloodbath, but it has to be done.  Frankly, that double scene sequence was self-indulgent, and the Max scene can be cut back a lot: Nick’s scene there is about 750 words and Max’s is 2500.  That’s way too unbalanced for parallel scenes

Rewrite Goal: Cut the living hell (5000 words) from that section, mostly Part Five but a healthy chunk from Max’s scene, too.

And then there’s the Crisis to Climax section which should be about 5000 words and actually is 4,600.  (That’s Part Seven.)  I’m fairly sure I can tighten that even more, but that’s still safely in the word count ballpark.

Why is all of this important?  Because readers get tired if the story doesn’t change up, and making the change-ups (turning points) come closer together as the story progresses means the reader subconsciously feels the pacing pick up.  So another thing I have to do in the Paper Edit is

Rewrite Goal: Emphasize those soft turning points, especially Nita’s Things Get Worse in the bar and Nita’s reaction to Nick ad the end of the breakfast scene.  .  (Her crisis when Nick opens the box and her climax when she stands up and say, “Fine, the supernatural exists and I’m going to kick its ass” already work I think, at least for this part in the drafting process.)

And then there’s escalation . . . stay tuned.

 

The post Nita’s First Act Truck Draft: Pacing appeared first on Argh Ink.

Nita’s First Act Paper Edit: Pacing

 

And now we come to the math portion of our program.

I put all the pieces of the truck draft together in one file and checked the word count: 41,067.  This is a fine word count for a book that’s 120,000 words long, but this one is aiming for 100,000.  So I need to ax about 6,000 to 8000 words in the Paper Edit.  And not just any words, I need to ax for pacing.  Argh.

As some of you may recall, acts in a story in Crusie world must get shorter as the story progresses to escalate the action.  In the same way, sections of an act need to get shorter as the act progresses.  So I looked at the word counts on the sections of the draft you just suffered through with me, and thought about act turning points.

From the beginning to the first turning point, when the demon tries to shoot Nita in her house, it’s 16500 words.

From there to the Point of No Return when Nita leaves the diner no longer seeing Nick as the enemy, is another 7000 words.

From there to the crisis at Motel Styx is 13,000 words.

And from the crisis to the climax on Demon Head is 4500 words.  

That’s a mess. 

Let’s say I’m shooting for 32,000 to 35,000 words for this first act, about a third of the book which is what my first acts run, and I need each section to get smaller.  That would give me, very roughly, sections that are 12000, 10000, 8000, 5000.  I say very roughly because the big thing is that they get noticeably smaller not that they hit a particular word count.  

So I have 16500 instead of 12000 and 7000 instead of 10000 in the section before the Point of No Return.  That’s 23500 words instead of the 22000 (12000/10000) I’m aiming for so that’s actually not bad.  The problem is the turning point is in the wrong place.  I’m still going to cut the hell out of it on the paper edit, but it’s not egregiously off.   Even better, Part One (the Nick and Nita parallel scenes) and Part Two (the scene sequence in the bar) naturally come out to about 12000 words.  Even better than that, that’s naturally where Nick’s Things Get Worse is because that’s where Nita recovers from the scupper which tips him that she’s not human.  And that’s also where Nita sees him as a skeleton; the problem there is that she thinks she’s hallucinating so it’s not a TGW for her.

Rewrite Goal: Somehow create a Things Get Worse for Nita at the end of the bar scene sequence.

Shifting Nita’s turning point shifts the word count distribution to 12000/11500, which means I need to get rid of about 1500 words in the double scene sequence and breakfast scene..  The good news is that we already know that double sequence drags at 8000 words, and the breakfast scene is way too long at 3500 words.  So while that’s a lot of cutting, I already knew that was in the cards.  .

Rewrite Goal: Cut the hell (1500-3000 words) out of that draggy double scene sequence and the breakfast scene.

Then that throws me into the section between the Point of No Return and the Crisis (Parts Five and Six) which should be about 8000 words tops.  It’s 13,000 freaking words.  I think Nita goes shopping in there.  Argh.  That’s going to be a bloodbath, but it has to be done.  Frankly, that double scene sequence was self-indulgent, and the Max scene can be cut back a lot: Nick’s scene there is about 750 words and Max’s is 2500.  That’s way too unbalanced for parallel scenes

Rewrite Goal: Cut the living hell (5000 words) from that section, mostly Part Five but a healthy chunk from Max’s scene, too.

And then there’s the Crisis to Climax section which should be about 5000 words and actually is 4,600.  (That’s Part Seven.)  I’m fairly sure I can tighten that even more, but that’s still safely in the word count ballpark.

Why is all of this important?  Because readers get tired if the story doesn’t change up, and making the change-ups (turning points) come closer together as the story progresses means the reader subconsciously feels the pacing pick up.  So another thing I have to do in the Paper Edit is

Rewrite Goal: Emphasize those soft turning points, especially Nita’s Things Get Worse in the bar and Nita’s reaction to Nick ad the end of the breakfast scene.  .  (Her crisis when Nick opens the box and her climax when she stands up and say, “Fine, the supernatural exists and I’m going to kick its ass” already work I think, at least for this part in the drafting process.)

And then there’s escalation . . . stay tuned.

 

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Act One, Part Seven: The Final Scene Sequence and Transition into Act Two

Here’s the thing about first acts: they’re a bitch to write. They’re loaded with back story and infodump that you have to make into the now of the story, you have to twist your narrative into a pretzel to foreshadow any character you can’t get into a scene, you have to start not only your main conflict but any subplots you’ve got going, and you have to do it all while moving your plot from the beginning where the stability is shattered to the first turning point where things get much, much worse and the story hits a climactic turning point that swings the entire narrative in a new direction.   And you have to do that in 33,000 words or less that are never boring and continually escalate as the stakes rise.

All of which means that worst part of first acts, which are already hell to write, is that last part, the chunk between the crisis and the climax/turning point. Welcome to Part Seven.

So what I had to write here was action that would irrevocably convince Nita that the supernatural was real, that Nick really was going to be the Devil, and that things on the island were much, much worse that either of them had thought. The good news is, almost all of the set-up is over by this point, and I just have to hurl the act toward its climax. I think this is still too long, and I have a nasty feeling that Nita refuses for too long to accept the truth, but since it’s time to move to a paper edit and then let this act go, I putting up here as is.

I’ll get the post about the paper edit up later this week with that revision (ONE MORE TIME) replacing all the truck draft pages, but by now I’m sure you’re all so sick of this, that there’s no reason to keep reading the revisions.

Still, it should be illuminating to read the first scene in the first discovery draft and then the first scene in the paper edit draft. That always blows my mind because of course I always think my first drafts are alternately sheer genius and total crap, depending on the time of day. And then there’ll be the way the first scene reads in the published book . . .

The purpose behind all of this, besides motivating me to finish the damn act, was to show (a) how I draft a book and (b) why it takes me so long to write one so people would quit complaining.   (Also, I’m old, cut me a break.)  I’m pretty sure I accomplished (a) with this series of posts, so I’m satisfied my Argh work is done.

The book, however, is not. Back to work.  Oh, and here’s Part Seven.

 

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Act One, Part Six: Parallel Scenes

 

 

 

 

Yes, I know, that last scene ended abruptly.  Here’s the next part.  

Remember back in Part One of this truck draft when we did parallel scenes with Nita and Nick to establish them as the main characters and set up their meet in the next scene sequence? This part is parallel scenes again, but this time it’s setting up a subplot doppelganger protagonist and antagonist, Nick and Max.

Nick is a conman who became the Devil’s fixer; Max is con-demon who became Mammon’s fixer; since Mammon is one of the leaders of Nick’s opposition in Hell, that makes Max one of Nick’s antagonists. As just another minion, Max wouldn’t be much fun. But Max has a lot in common with Nick–he’s completely loyal to his boss, he likes his job, and he’s good at it– and he really admires the skill and ruthlessness with which Nick conducts himself, both when he was alive and in the five hundred earth years he’s been dead.

Max likes a worth adversary, but he knows Nick is more than worthy because he has an advantage: Max has emotions that can trip him up, Nick doesn’t. So these next two scenes are parallel–two fixers really annoyed with their bosses because they’ve just discovered huge boss-created messed they’re going to have to clean up–but they also set up the Nick/Max conflict/relationship to come.

I’m still not sure it’s a great idea to introduce Max’s PoV this late, but he doesn’t fit anywhere else, and he’s so much fun to write that I’m not giving him up. Wait’ll we get to the scene where he tells Button she looks like a dandelion.

 

 

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Act One, Part Five: The Investigation, in Double Scene Sequences

 

Remember how slow the first double scene sequence was?  Yes, I’m cutting it, but now we have another one: After breakfast, Nita and Nick go to work because that’s logically where they’d go. Unfortunately that’s boring.  The solution:  Make sure there’s lots of conflict and cut as much as possible.  

But I also have to make sure that Nick and Nita are in each other’s scenes by at least name-checking; that is, they both have to constantly come up against evidence of each other’s actions on the island so they’re each present in each other’s story line.  Whether this is romance or just has a romance subplot, it’s just too late in the act to not hit both of them in the same scene, especially given how intertwined their investigations are.   

And there are other things this section has to accomplish like the characters I have to foreshadow, people who are going to show up in Act Two (remember Lenny?) who aren’t in Act One.  They have to be mentioned (if you’re writing a Crusie; your rules may differ), so this is my last chance to get the humans all salted in here–demons get mentioned in the next section–before the final section which is all action. 

That means this section has the same problem that the third section (Nita at home with her assassin demon, Nick in his apartment with his minion demons) had: the two protagonists are apart doing things that aren’t that interesting to the reader who, I’m assuming, would rather see people (I include demons as people) in  action. So again, that means that this section has to move fast and involve interesting people in conflict while uncovering new information that captures the reader’s interest. This section is necessary to set up the last two parts which are going to cork along at a good clip because we’re close to the place where all the set-up is done and nothing but the action is left.

So how to make Nita’s section fun?  First, make her scenes as short as possible; this is Nick’s sequence (she got the first one).  Then:

• Show Nita at risk and in conflict with her boss.

• Show Nita and Button moving into a closer relationship through action as they find out interesting things about Nick, first in Button’s PoV and then the next scene in Nita’s.  Their conflict is very low key, but they’re discussing Nick and it’s short, so I’m going to try to skate that past you all; then the next scene has Jason who wants them to stop investigating Joey’s death, and who introduces them to his new partner making this Nita vs Jason.  This stuff is still low stakes so it has to move fast.  .

• Then show Nita trying to find Nick and finding out he’s ahead of her, ending up back at the bar where he goes missing, then set up a new mystery as a hook into the next section.  Even though Nick isn’t in this section, he’s working almost as an antagonist because everywhere she goes, he’s either anticipated her, or the mention of his name makes things harder for her.  So this begins with a montage of frustration for Nita as a transition and then ends up with Nita vs. Vinnie, who has become Team Nick, for awhile at least.

And then there are Nick’s scenes.  I was going to give him this sequence, but as it turns out, it has to start with Nita.  Nick spends too much time talking with Mort in the diner, while Nita goes straight to work.:

• Show Nick in conflict with the Mayor and getting a feel for how the most powerful guy on the island operates. 

• Show Nick in conflict with Vinnie who has an Idea.

• Show Nick dealing with the women at the historical society while trying to get key information about the history of the island without betraying that the founders were demons.. This one is tricky because back story = boring, so I really needed to hit personalities and conflict to keep the focus of the story in the now.

• Show Nick discovering something key in another place and then hitting an abrupt shift into the next section. Yeah, it’s a cliffhanger, so this is more of a transition than a scene.

Then splice the two sequences back together and try to set up transitions between them.

So at the end of these sequences, both Nita and Nick are angry, and then Nick gets Part Six which makes him angrier.  They clash at the beginning of Part Seven which leads them to the crisis scene, which starts to make Nita come undone up to the last scene where she loses it.  They’re forced to work together because of the crisis scene and finally driven into partnership because of the climax.  

So by this point in the act, the only place I’m weak on conflict is in this double scene sequence.  (And the previous one, but I’m going to fix that in the paper edit.  Stay tuned.).  Off to annoy my characters now.  Thank god the next section is already done in parallel scenes and only needs cut back a little, which I am sure you will help with in the comments.  .  

These double scene sequences are killers.

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Cherry Saturday 4-1-2017

Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day but it’s also Pillow Fight Day.

Don’t google “pillow fight” unless you like seeing scantily clad women merrily swatting each other with bedding.

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Act One, Part Four: The Breakfast Scene as a Second Transition

 

Welcome to another installment of rewriting the breakfast scene.  There’s a reason why this one is so difficult: It’s the central turning point in the first act, the place where Nita and Nick start seeing each other as human beings instead of puzzles to be solved.  

• Part One is two parallel scenes that show Nita and Nick in stable worlds and the beginning of the fracture of those worlds.

• Part Two is Nita vs. Nick as they both try to find out what’s going wrong and the beginning (however testy) of their relationship.

• Part Three is two scene sequences showing the aftermath of that Part Two conflict with additional hits on Nita’s conviction that there is nothing supernatural on the island and Nick’s conviction that there’s is nothing left of his humanity.

• Part Four, the breakfast scene, is the payoff to all of that as they see each as more than puzzles,  and the transition into the last half of the story:

• Part Five, another double scene sequence (this one belongs to Nick) in which the two of them separately try to find out more about Joey’s death, the missing agents, and each other and getting more hits on their convictions about reality.

• Part Six, two parallel scenes that show Nick’s conflict in Hell and throw the act into . . .

• Part Seven, a final single scene sequence with all the players on stage  in which what’s left of Nita and Nick’s  stable world disintegrates.

All of that makes the breakfast scene literally pivotal, that is, the plot pivots on it as a soft turning point.

What’s a soft turning point, you ask? (Well, carolc asked.) I made it up for my own use but I will generously share it with my fellow wonks (that’s anybody who’s still reading this post). Turning points are places in a narrative where a story turns in a new directions. There are big ones–the beginning where the story turns from the stable world; the middle ones that are things going wrong, the point of no return where the events of the story have changed the protagonist too much for her to back to her old stable life, and the crisis or going-to-hell point where all is lost; and then the last turning point, the climax that turns the story out of conflict and into a new stable world. Those are the biggies and they come before, between, and after the acts. But acts are like stories in and of themselves, and so they have internal turning points which are good to look at in a truck draft. (Not a discovery draft. You just write a discovery draft, don’t pick at it.)

So this first act of Nita’s, analyzed with turning points, makes the breakfast scene the point of no return. The elements are already there: Nick’s calm explanation of the supernatural makes it less unbelievable, Nita’s food brings some of Nick’s memories back, they bond over the food and over their interest in finding out who ordered Joey killed. I just need to make those things stronger so that the events send them both out with intensified goals. The breakfast scene isn’t a Point of No Return scene with the same intensity as the midpoint of the whole novel, it’s much softer, but it serves the same purpose in this act. And of course I did most of the stuff you told me to when you all did a beta read on the breakfast scene before, and thank you very much for that. Here’s the turning points diagram for this act: And here is your truck draft for the breakfast scene (you can get to it from the WiP tab on the website, too). It still needs work, but it does what it needs to do for the moment.  As always, all comments and suggestions are welcome. No rewriting, please, that’s my job.

The post Act One, Part Four: The Breakfast Scene as a Second Transition appeared first on Argh Ink.