Focusing Act One
So it was a rough spring, and June wasn’t that great, either, but now I am back in the zone (Bob never left the zone, Bob has put down roots in the zone).We had 70,000 first draft words done, but I wasn’t happy because I couldn’t see the focus. So I did what I always do, split it into smaller parts (acts) so I could see the pattern. (This stuff makes Bob crazy, but he knew the job was dangerous when he took it.). So in case you wanted to know why I’ve been so silent, I’ve been panicking.
The first act was 25,000 words, which is short for one of my first acts (usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 33,000 words) but that’s no big deal. Faster start. The first act is where the trouble starts, the conflict starts, the protagonist is introduced, the setting is introduced (that’s place, time, community), all of it propelling the protagonist into the second act where things get much worse. And since we each have a protagonist, the second scene is Bob’s set-up scene. So it’s at this point that I take the 25,000 words that I separated from the draft and separate it some more into scene sequences.
A Scene Sequence is a sequence of scenes that taken together form a complete narrative, like a chapter in a book. In this case, Chapters One and Two show first Anna and then Nate having a bad start to their day as the people around them (community) who are on their side, thwart them. And because readers are good at reading into things, they’re also developing expectations, such as that even though Anna’s in NJ and Nate is in NYC, they’re gonna meet.
The second scene sequence is Things get worse when their individual bosses saddle them with jobs they don’t want and send them to Atlantic separately. Chapters three and four.
The third scene sequence is each of them in AC, where their jobs go even more wrong than they’d anticipated. Chapters five and six.
Okay, that’s six chapters without them meeting, which I was worried about, but I sent the first act to Anne Stuart and she said it was moving fast enough and besides the reader knows what’s coming, so no worries. That helped. (Thank you, Krissie!)
Then finally, Chapters Seven through Thirteen, they’re both so frustrated and annoyed by their very bad days, that Anna picks up Nate and they have a one night stand using fake names, figuring they’re not taking any chances because they’ll never see each other again. I was worried about that, too. That’s a very long scene sequence, and the sex is not very explicit–here’s a surprise, it’s mostly dialogue–but Krissie said no problem again, so moving on . . .
The next scene sequence is the Aftermath when Nate finds out he slept with the woman he’s supposed to be surveilling, and Anna finds out the FBI is after her because of the package she dropped off in AC, and they meet again, for real this time, real names and everything. That’s the turning point, the place where the story turns a corner and becomes something new.
Okay, with that done, I could move on to the second act, which is what I’m working on now, The second act starts off with the aftermath of what they did in AC–neither of their bosses is happy–and moves on through scene sequences that arc their new relationship to the midpoint where they have to decide to trust each other or not. Then the third act is the two of them working together to find the Big Bad, and the fourth act is the climax, a big party scene where they bring down the antagonist and Nate suggests they try dating for real.
I am happy with this plot. We still don’t have a good title, but that’ll come; we still have two more books to write. And the great thing is, when you’re doing a series, you do the heavy lifting in Book One and then build on that in the next two. So I’m hopeful the next two will go fast.
Once I figure out the pattern. (Somewhere Bob is sighing.). Anyway, that and the health stuff is the reason I have been absent. I apologize. I will do better. Noting but good times ahead.
