TDOSH !

 This post got long.....




Baby M
So, I don't blog much about myself, but things have changed ! I will say, I don't see it changing my writing much. Since I am at home full time I find myself writing a lot more and since my mother and MIL and SIL tell me I should let the baby get used to noise, I've been typing away. Because of  the work that DH and I do, it's safe to say she'll hear a lot of typing....unless we all start writing on iPads.
Although, interesting fact, DH writes all his first drafts by hand.

I'm between calling the baby either, Baby M or Little Lamb on the blog...I'm calling my husband DH because I think it's fun I get to use it !

Character or Plot ?
Okay, I'm about to be a bit politically incorrect (blame it on the hormones) but I'm a bit of a character-whore. I mean it, I love creating characters. I usually always write character sketches and keep them handy, most of my serials have come to me through characters.

Which is where I am struggling with this new thing (this will be the last mention of it, I promise). I was drafting plot ideas and I was like and then...government shutdown ?

 Anyway, based on a comment in the last post, I thought I'd do a role call:

United Light - Plot First
This one was plot first. I wanted to write both an updated version of Guy Maupassant's The Necklace and also write about cults. I knew I was going to have the characters start our clean and innocent and then lose themselves to payback this enormous debt...and ultimately fall in love, but then Elisa came in the picture and that didn't work out.

Rose Garland and Golden Stars - Character (obviously)
I just wanted to write a backstory for Rhett...I had no inclinations for UL2 at this point and I wanted him to have some depth. Then I got swallowed away in Coast Guard Academy life, that I decided to write a whole new thing.

Ivy Brothers - Character
 As many of you know Darcy' and Nick's POV were originally flash fictions I wrote for a magazine. So even though they had no real ending, I knew in my mind the minute I wrote him  Darcy was going to die. Then I imagined Elias and Slate. As you can tell from the serial itself I had NO idea what to do with these characters...I couldn't write them meeting because that was already established by Nick and Slate''s POV, so I wrote them breaking up.

Veritas - Setting/Character
I have a very vivid memory of how I got this one, it's in two parts. First, I wanted to write about someone with Stockholm Syndrome...blame MSNBC again. I wanted it to be a girl who started to identify with her captors.

 Secondly, Lauren was spending the night and listening to one of the Twilight soundtracks and that song " Eyes on Fire" got stuck in my head. It was stuck in my  head while I was watching coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake aftemath and something about the stories made me imagine a world that was wrecked and how people resurrect from that. This idea of wandering a desolate landscape. Obviously it evolved, but that was the genesis. Not sure how I got on cyberpunk.

Then of course Sara came to me as the "star" followed by the Dorys.  I'm not sure when Alan formed.

Hidden - I HAD TO
I have honestly no idea. I think I wanted to recycle ideas I originally had for Veritas. I liked my characters but I had NO plot for them. Plus I had to deal with Minnow's death...and I wanted to bring her back.

Sundays - Character
With Sundays, there is two hands to this. On one hand, I wanted to write a somewhat "sexually charged" but not explicit romance between an officer and a prisoner because I figure with so much testoserone in one place there has to be some UST. Also,I may have been reading a lot of Supernatural fanfiction....and they made it seem so normal.

But also, I wanted to write Haley as a character who is a foil to Alan. He gets taken to prison for something he didn't do, he goes through a lot, people are mean to him, but he doesn't turn bitter and awful. He actually makes a better life for himself by enlisting and still holding to his beliefs.

Mimic-Character
I just really wanted to timeskip and write these characters as adults through another person's lens. I was trying to end it in a way I could live with.

Blessed Hearts- Story
At this point, I knew I struggled with story, so I wanted to write something based on an already told story as sort of an exercise. I had an idea for Rin and Dark and for the setting of where they lived, but the execution of taking an anecdote and stretching it proved to be difficult. This is  one I have NO recollection of writing.

On Higher Ground - Character/Story
I didn't want to do this one, but fine. I just wanted to dig into that kmart realism, but also I wanted to write something about Hurricane Katrina...I just never quite got that far.

 Actually the starting point for this serial is a scene I never wrote. I saw a scene where Julianna, Rhett, Zane Brooks (who is mentioned in chapter 1 but never seen) and Cody are at a community pool by themselves during Memorial's Day. And Zane (who is in the Marines) bad talks the Coast Guard and they have this lighthearted conversation and  then  it kind of echoes  back later because  the Coast Guardsmen who save a  lot of people during the Hurricane...guys I watched so many Coast Guard documentaries on YouTube/Hulu/Netflix.

I also wanted this survival story of Julianna, her SIL, MIL and Grandmother trying to get away from the Hurricane.

I also had this scene between Rhett and his sister, Savannah...guys, I see some novellas coming.

Vice
I'd say this time around it is ALL about the characters and I'm now concentrating more on story goals than acutal plot; What is the goal of each character and how do I get them there and what do they have to give up to get there.


TDOSH !
Well, that post was longer than I intended. Who is ready for some Cortland TDOSH ? Now, incidentally this chapter has a bit of Sawyer too.

Cortland as an orderly, I go all editor and horse metaphors...