KISS
I have been working on the Flower Queen’s Daughter story. I decided I needed to dig deeper and figure out the heroine’s storyline and what her own journey looks like. So far, I detailed conflicts and beats for the first four scenes. My real issue is with keeping things simple and preventing them from becoming overcomplicated.
Anthea is a bit of a tomboy, filling the role of the son her parents never had. She’s horse-mad and her mother is not pleased. Our heroine promised her father on his deathbed to oversee the family stables and continue his work on the breeding line.
Her mother wishes her daughter settled in a comfortable marriage, not dirty and smelling of horse. She doesn’t know about the promise and tries to forbid Anthea from spending her time in the stable.
While working with the steward, Anthea discovers one of their mares was pregnant when she was sold and this foal turns out to be a key part of the breeding program and must be recovered if her father’s goals are to be achieved.
Her mother is overjoyed by Anthea’s invitation to the Dragon Family’s House Party. Anthea agrees to go, but for much different reasons, she tracked the sale of the pregnant mare to them. However, neither realizes why Dragon Mother extended the invite.
Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. This week’s plan is to sit down and hammer on the heroine’s storyline some more. The general idea of where I want to take her exists, but I need to weave it into the original hero’s story.
I think my new mantra needs to be K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid. Everything keeps getting tangled up and I end up chasing down rabbit holes after complications that are in most cases unnecessary. I rarely attempt to write short and don’t think I would be able to do so without problems. I read a couple articles on the topic, but my brain doesn’t understand the difference between dilemma and major conflict.
The ability to estimate word counts is currently beyond me. If someone asks how long a story will be, you got me. Not a clue. If I consider my difficulties in finishing what I start, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
So here’s what I have for the heroine’s story so far:
Flora wants her daughter, Anthea, to be more ladylike because she knows a hoyden won’t land a suitable husband. However, on his deathbed, Anthea promised her father to carry on his breeding program at the family stables.
Anthea and the steward discover Dragon family stole foal when they bought a mare last season. She realizes this foal holds the key to her father’s breeding plan and vows to get it back.
Anthea wants to make her mother happy but can’t seem to do it when her mother asks for her promise not to search out the stolen foal and to think about her future.
She receives invitation to Dragon’s house party and sees it as a way to keep promise to both parents. Little does Anthea realize, she has been invited because the Dragon Mother wants to compromise her into marrying her eldest son.
I feel for ya, Kaige. I often have the same problem of over-complicating and twisting things. Sometimes it takes someone standing on the outside to say – ‘why don’t you just do it the simple way?’ in order to get things flowing after I’ve tangled them up. We have to train ourselves to be that voice for ourselves too.
Our jobs as writers is to reveal all the intricacies of these complicated journeys we map out in the most condensed and easy-to read manner possible. We want the reader to go on an ambling sort of twisty path, not a labirynth. So, the more we complicate things unnecessarily, the more work we create for ourselves.
KISS is a good mantra, and I wish you all the luck in the world finding the end of your story!
*hugs*
~Gwen
“…the Dragon Mother wants to compromise her into marrying her eldest son.” – Is he hot? Cause that all sounds good, if he’s a hottie. 🙂
I know what you mean. It’s hard to get all the details figured out about our characters and then to get just the right amount of that info on the page – and don’t forget to show, not tell. *sigh* It’s certainly not easy and I feel for ya.
*hugs*
~Kat
hot is good. Tall, dark and hot is better. I’ve always been a sucker for dark hair. Maybe they all have long dark hair and it’s the trademark of the hot Dragon family 0_O
sounds like you have a grip on where it’s going. Wordcount is always hard. You’re right. No clue. The best answer is as much as needs to be there.
This amazing pre-planning. As always, I’m blown away by your writing prep work. That’s one of the things I enjoy about following your progress – that we work so differently!
I’m looking forward to this one too 🙂
I dunno, it doesn’t FEEL like I have a grip on this, Jodi. And Bria, honestly I think I was better off when I was clueless last summer. At least then I could sit down and write something, anything, and not always be second guessing it. =)
I’m probably just whining and what I really need to do is some quality BICHOK time.
Hey, it’s your blog,snark-yourself-away. 🙂
Sounds awesome. It this paranormal? I could totally see the dragon family…as shifting/actual dragons. 🙂 what time period? Historical, right? The storyline intrigues me. I wish I thought my own stories sounded so interesting.
Miss ya in chat…
seeing as how i haven’t been there much.
Hi to your DH and the whole family.
Bethanne, it’s actually just a straight up Regency set historical. I’m trying to take an existing folktale (The Flower Queen’s Daughter in this case) and work something out of it. I could have just rewritten the folktale, but NOOOoooooooo! I had go and make it harder on myself and turn it into a real romance story.
Glad you like the sound of it so far. I haven’t been in chat much either, lately and can’t even blame it on a move. =) Hope you guys are settling in.
It’s good to see you working on this! I like what you have thus far. Hopefully, my spewing of brain matter into an email assisted. And I guess you should spank me for not getting much further along with A Heart to Match. Altho, I left Rafe with Julia bugging him about the blog he’s always reading now…
Winter, your email did help, even if it was in making me realize where I didn’t want to go in some ways. I saw you made a new site for Heart to Match, but ummm… are you done wrestling with WP? I’ll have to check it out again.
The site works but there’s stuff behind the scenes that is giving me fits. I haven’t had the time to hunt their forums for the answers either. I think I have a resource I can tap if I need to. A programmer whose message board I’m moderating now. As I said, I think everything’s pretty much working on the frontside tho. The feed, the links…