Melancholith

entry the 3rd
9:34pm, central time zone
Saturday
alabama galaxy, outer huntsvegas, culdesac system, planet tatooine, wretched hive, walking carpet cantina, just woke up after sleeping for about twenty hours

Spam Count: 111

Hammered out a step-outline for Book One of my trilogy today. Came up with about 25 major scenes, which, according to Sensei McKee, is a little under half what a standard-length novel is supposed to have. That might be a good thing, though, as I'm informed that publishing houses love very-short manuscripts, especially from first-time authors.

The next step in The Process is called a "treatment". In a step-outline, you write a paragraph or so describing each major scene, where a scene is a turning point in the plot. In a treatment, you write a paragraph or so describing each "beat", where a beat is like a turn in a game of chess. The Main Characters make a new move, and the Forces of Antagonism make a move in response. Each beat sets up a new beat, just like each move in chess suggests a new response. Until someone achieves checkmate.

I was never all that great at chess, although I did have this one girl who rode the same bus as me in high school who said I looked like a Russian chess player before I started spiking my hair.

nose-bleedingly,
fiasco joe

"Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?"
-Frodo Baggins