January 27th, 2008 admin
First I was sick for a weekend, then I had company, my Friday evenings have not been very productive. I did make it to the bookstore, though, and found some resources for both the deck and the book. Of course, the one book I thought I’d found for wedding customs turned out to be one I bought back when I first started the manuscript, they’d just changed the cover! Whoops! Brought it back and exchanged it for some other books on graphic novels in general. Now things are all about getting ahead on other projects before I travel in 2 weeks so I’m not sure how much blocking is going to get done before then. Might be a good project to take on the plane, though! Oh, yeah, ding! We have a winner. I can totally mark-up copy on the plane. Awesome idea.
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January 4th, 2008 admin
Or, well, actually that would be Act 1 Scene 2, still gotta get used to the new structure.
I had planned to work on the book tonight but last nights writing plans kept getting skewed so it was time to fall back a step and grab something else just to be able to count a smidgen of productivity for the evening. Based on the early brainstorm, I ditched the two chapter title/filler pages between original chapters 1 & 2 and now am up to page 21 and not quite through the engagement Act. Apparently I really was writing scenes and not chapters when I started out and the flow of the pages is really working for me. When it’s printed, many of the odd-numbered or right-hand pages will end with something that will make you want to turn the page and see what’s revealed next. This is all part of the blocking process, the planning the visual cues and is kinda cool that–so far–I don’t really have to force these page-turns, they are just happening naturally.
Another brainstorm I had while working last night was that there will probably be 9 Chapters or Acts. The reason behind this plan (which could change the farther I get, of course) is that each will then correspond (though how closely is still yet to be determined) to a card in the 3-tier past-present-future spread that will come into play as the ‘wedding spread’ towards the end of the book. Whether only 9 cards will come to Tessa (the main character) or if there will be fewer or more still remains to be seen. I think the original draft which is about the first third of the book only had a single mystery card but that was one of the details that I knew would change when the prologue got a severe decapitation and the focus of the story shifted a tiny but important notch. An additional benefit to the 9 Acts is that I could, theoretically, put out each part as a printed serial, depending on interest, etc. 9 also works as a good number of months to plan the wedding that the story revolves around, etc. It’s a good number in general.
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