-26: Pressure, and an Outline

All day my partner and I talk via our helmet intercoms about possibilities. Ideas are floating in my head but they lack cohesion. I’ve had female protagonists, male protagonists, dual protagonists, a mystery…what’s next? An ensemble cast? A supernatural element? Make it a comedy? A comedic disaster would indeed be a challenge.

This morning I received an email from my ever-patient publisher. He doesn’t want to push but the spring catalogue is about to go to press and they need copy. Could I please tell them what the story is about? This is it. I have to decide. I tell my partner that we have to stop early and make sure our roadside motel has wifi. We do, and it does. He gets me a cold drink then makes himself scarce. I close the drapes and up the air conditioner. If I’m cold I’ll walk, and I think better when I’m walking.

The Outline:

I’ll make my main character thirteen, a boy, and quirky. He will tell the story in first person which will become my first challenge since I’ve never written a whole book in first person before. He’s a visitor to Ste. Agathe, just south of Winnipeg. He’s been left with his grandparents (why?) and needs to start at a new school. He meets new friends, i.e. ensemble cast. (How? Who? Names? What are they like?) Add a cantankerous old guy (is he a relative?) and a mysterious stranger (that angle could go anywhere.)

I need to make the flood exciting – a tall order since the foreshadowing will have to last for weeks. think I should give that challenge over to the main character - it’ll be his job to make the flood exciting. So how does he do it?

The flood will take care of itself, but each member of the cast will have to play some kind of role. The crisis of the story can’t be the flood itself because it takes place over too extended a period; Mr. Main Character will have to have some other crisis in his life to distract attention from the disaster to come. Does the disaster resolve his problem (like I did with the last book), or simply play out beside it? What role does the mysterious stranger play?

More questions than answers but I think I have enough for the catalogue, and a line of inquiry. For the record, I’m recording all this in Scrivener, an awesome computer program for writers. I don’t use it for the actual writing which I choose to do in a more free-flowing way, but as a tool to organize one’s thoughts and research it’s wonderful.