Dialog Checklist

Dialog is one of the best ways to bring your characters to life. A sharp line of dialog can tell you more about a character than an entire paragraph of description. I've compiled a list of some of the good and bad ways to approach dialog. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but I find that these are pretty good rules of thumb.

GOOD:

• Dialog Steeped in the Character's Voice - An expert is going to use the vernacular of their field. A street urchin is not going to use erudite vocabulary.

• Altering Characters' Speech Depending on Who's in the Room – Most characters will speak differently to their boss than they would with their buddies at the bar. If they're irreverent with both you need to consider what the consequences of that are.

• Brevity.

• Wit - But make sure it's truly witty and suited to the character. If your beta readers don't chuckle, or worse, if they groan when they get to that bit– it's not witty.

• Differing Character Voices – The words should let you know who's speaking before you get to the dialog tag.

• Dialog Tags – As many as necessary, as few as you can get away with.

• Interspersing Actions Within a Conversation – Use to show character mood or attitude and for pacing. You can also use this to reduce the need for dialog tags.

BAD:

• "As you know, Bob…" – This is a bad way to get an explanation into your story. Never have one character explain something to someone that should already know the information. Use a foil or put it in your exposition.

• "Said Bookisms" – I'm not as against these as some people, but use sparingly. 'He whispered', or 'she yelled' can be effective and unobtrusive alternates to 'said' and 'asked'. But don't have your characters spouting, snarling, screaming, moaning, and ejaculating all over the place.

• Boring Introductions – When someone is introduced to a group don't bother with, "Hi, nice to meet you." Put it in the exposition. Susie was introduced to everyone in the board room. However, if there's something important about the way two characters meet, by all means show the introduction. A good case for this would be instant attraction or animosity. Leading off with a charming smile or a killer grip to show dominance can be very telling about the characters.

• Using a Class Lecture to Present World Building – A sentence, or two, maybe, if it makes sense for the character to be in that class and if something else is going on in the scene. But don't use a history class as an excuse to info dump your extensive world building onto the reader.

• Inappropriate Colloquialisms – Make sure your turns of phrase are appropriate to the time and place of your story. A medieval peasant would not use the phrase, 'totally awesome' or 'crackalackin', and really, neither would a human five hundred years from now on another planet.

Did I miss something? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

The twisted relationship between author and reader

So... uh... Hi everyone! Karen kindly invited me to write a couple guest posts previously and honestly, I got a little hooked. I rarely talk about writing specifically on my own blog so when Karen extended me an invite to join these lovely ladies on a permanent basis, I jumped at the chance. So for the foreseeable future I'll be your designated Proser on alternate Mondays. Welcome to the show!

The thing I've been thinking about lately is just how weird the relationship between us writers and our readers is. Obviously we love you - and them - all. We're sharing little pieces of ourselves in every story we write and our readers pour themselves into them as they read. There's something extremely profound about the whole experience.

And yet... Well, here's the thing; by definition, if we're doing our jobs, we cause our readers pain. Mountains and mountains of pain. And quite a few of us are overachievers by nature.

A little over a month ago I read Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons which was an excellent book. Highly recommended for all. But the ending left me completely broken. I wept uncontrollably for minutes and kept crying for pretty much the rest of the evening. So I of course took to Twitter to share my malaise and here's what happened:

@nniskanen Punching the air in victory probably isn't an appropriate response on my part.... :-)
— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) July 31, 2014

The worst thing is that I can totally relate! I would not even hesitate to do a writerly equivalent of an end-zone dance if I could break a reader like I got broken. And that is all kinds of messed up.

Our readers trust us, not just with their time, but with their well-being.  And as ever, with great power comes great responsibility. It's just that our readers want, nay expect, us to make them suffer in many ways great and small. Even if we're not talking about emotional pain like the one I experienced at the expert hands of Marie Brennan, there's still stress and worry that every reader experiences when they read fiction. All the successful thrillers, horror stories and such create some type of emotional reaction in the reader. When Bourne is getting chased by whoever is the latest to get on his trail, there's a real fear in the reader, even if we do know rationally that he's going to get away somehow.

David Farland talks about reading as emotional exercise and it's the best reason I can come up with for why we and others as readers actually want to have our hearts wrenched out of our chests by the people we call storytellers. He talks about how the release of the artificial stress caused by fiction releases endorphins well after the actual reading experience is over. The article itself is long but well worth the read. It explains the reader's side of this weirdness. After all, the second I could see my screen I went online and bought the next installment in Brennan's Lady Trent series.

As for us storytellers... Well, maybe it's the satisfaction of a job well done and maybe there's just a little bit of a sociopath inside all of us. But that is probably a post for another time.

What have you read recently that completely broke your heart - in a good way of course?

Writing Friends, or why we writers need real (virtual) people in our lives

So one thing you may know about writers is that we all tend to lean toward introverted personalities. This doesn't mean we're social recluses, though some of us may be, but it does mean that we're not generally surrounded by piles and piles of friends--or piles and piles of social commitments, because for introverts the act of socializing is emotionally/mentally draining, whereas extroverts get energized by being with others. For introverts, we need the time alone (staring at the screen, chewing on our bottom lip as we attempt to resolve a plot conflict we painted ourselves into a corner with) to recharge.

HOWEVER, one thing I've learned as I've embraced my introvertedness is that I still need *people* in my life. And regular people who share my passions are an important part of my social network.

Which brings me to my writing buddies. I've developed a few absolutely fantastic networks of writers (connected with existing ones, helping to form networks where none existed) over the years and it's something I find myself so grateful for. Those "Gratefulness Challenges" are going around on social media at the moment and when I read each friend's three things they're grateful for, I mentally make my own list (I haven't contributed to the meme yet, may not. I'm not a joiner, lol.) My writing friends are near the top of my list every time!

So it is with lots of excitement and happiness I get to introduce you to our newest Proser, Nina Niskanen!

Nina and I are acquainted through an online writing network that a group of us created after finishing an online writing course with Mary Robinette Kowal (I highly recommend them, if you were considering it.) I was in the first class of Mary's, Nina in the second. Our online writing network is just these two groups (16 people) because we wanted the #s to be a reasonable size. Our main writing interaction is twice weekly Google+ hangouts, which we do twice weekly and I've blogged about before.

Oh dear. I've run out of time and I'm not quite done. Posting with the intent to add more about important writing friends later!

Lunatic Space Pirates - Sabrina's way

(subtitle: "When Karen learned not to make silly suggestions, because of the risk that we might run with them")  :)

I love story prompts. One of my favorite things to do is find upcoming anthologies and see if their prompts inspire me. When I had more time, I used to love Liberty Hall's challenges, but alas, I haven't been able to join in recently.

Here's how I worked in this prompt.

Step 1: Stare fixedly at prompt.
Step 2: Try to remove images of striped leggings and Johnny Depp from brain. I also had to try to not picture this anime:

Space Pirate Captain Harlock - 2013 version

Step 3: The ten step method. This is something I learned from someone at Hatrack (Rich Ware, I think?) where with any story idea, you write down the first ten story ideas you come up with. Then you throw those ten ideas away, because more likely than not they are cliches. This is one of my favorite pieces of writing advice of all time. I use it constantly, even though the number of ideas I get to before finding something I love varies widely.

So! Lunatic space pirates falling in love during freefall:
1. Firefly-ish group of bandits who roam space stealing things.
2. Super-metaphorical group of people in insane asylum, something that ends with some person thinking, "But really, aren't we all space pirates, floating through this crazy world?"
3. children playing dress-up
4. lunatic = moon crazy. Pirates specifically on the moon? Maybe the moon is crashing into earth?
5. Ghosts of dead pirates who have to fall in love to move on from this earthly (spacely?) plane.

At this point, my brain stalled. I was trying to consider too many things at once. It also didn't help that I had my cat plop himself two feet down from me and make this expression because he wants me to play.

Don't you love me???

Anyway, in order to brainstorm, I first separated out the free fall part. And then I did something I often do when stuck, which is to research a phrase to find alternate or less-obvious meanings.

Wikipedia tells me that, "In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where its weight is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on it and it moves along a geodesic.
I'm going to pretend I understood more than half of that. I always hated physics.

This definition of free fall is more interesting: "The ability to achieve the sense of weightlessness."

Okay, I like that. Something about a lack of burdens, of responsibilities.

Wikipedia also tells me that: "Lunatic" is an informal term referring to people who are considered mentally ill, dangerous, foolish or unpredictable; conditions once called lunacy. The term may be considered insulting in serious contexts, though is now more likely to be used in friendly jest. The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck". The term was once commonly used in law

(Yes, I know Wikipedia is a minefield of inaccuracy, and I would never use it for real research. But for brainstorming? Sure thing.)

From that same Wikipedia page linked above. I also learned that the "loonie" is the name for the Canadian dollar coin (Canadian space pirates??), and that "The term lunatic derives from the Latin lunaticus which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and "madness" as diseases caused by the Moon. By the fourth and fifth centuries astrologers began to commonly use the term to refer to neurological and psychiatric diseases. Philosophers such as Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the full Moon induced insane individuals with bipolar disorder by providing light during nights which would otherwise have been dark, and affecting susceptible individuals through the well-known route of sleep deprivation.] Through at least 1700 it was also a common belief that the Moon influenced fevers, rheumatism, episodes of epilepsy and other diseases.]"

OMG MOON DISEASE. (But it can't be a plague, because the Cinder series has that covered.)

Okay, so there is a moon disease.
1. Some sort of disease like black lung that moon miners get.
2. Some sort of mental disease where someone transfers between being in an insane asylum and a space pirate, like that Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode.
3. Bipolarism, as mentioned above, truly influenced by the phases of the moon.
4. Someone who is affected by the moon's phase no matter where they are.
5. Someone who is a deity of the moon, off on a ship somewhere, still tied to the phases and the state of the moon.
6. Werewolves on spaceships still affected by the moon (though isn't it the moon's light that makes them change? Hmm)


I know I should go on, but I've gotten too thoroughly stuck on #5 up there. But maybe it isn't the deity of the moon, and certainly not of our moon, but of a planet with multiple moons like Jupiter, and the intersections causes some sort of disease or manifestation of powers, of personality.

Now I've got the lunatic, space, and free-fall parts taken care of. Piracy can just means stealing, so maybe my goddess character needs to steal something to survive?

Okay, I've got a summary:

Gods were never meant to leave their worlds. But when the last of Selene's worshippers died in a global pandemic, she had just enough power left to send herself to a passing merchant ship and disguise herself as one of its workers. There, she hoped to find freedom, but the ties to her old world were not cut as easily as she would have thought, and the bits of stolen faith she survives on have left her frail. All of that would be bad enough, but now Selene has fallen in love with a mortal, and she has no idea how to keep him…

And the first thirteen:

One night, after a double shift in the engine room, the switching of Urmiel into its lower orbit hit Selene particularly hard. She doubled over and retched. Drops of blood cascaded from her lips like pearls, and the metal grating beneath her sizzled and warped where they fell. She wiped her mouth and took a shuddering breath.
"Selene!" David dropped to his knees next to her. He reached for her shoulder, but she knocked his hand away.
"I'm fine!" The phasing of Urmiel with Sadusen always made her cross. But Selene didn’t apologize. If she was smart, she would make David hate her now. Because it seemed that no matter how many thousands of light years she got from her home planet, the moons that had once been her domain hadn't lost any degree of their hold over her. Each shift and change of the seven moons twisted at her insides, wrenching her personality into ever changing forms. And before long, Rasoyn would come out of harmonious orbit. And then, she wouldn't love him anymore.



You'll just have to trust me that the free fall/shedding of responsibilities is going to be in there. But not her cutting her ties to her planet. That would be too easy.


Only now am I going to read the other posts from this week. It looks like we've had a lot of awesome stories from this. Space teenagers! Space janitors! Space prisonbreaks! And space rescue of McLoveinterest!

By the way, ladies, if anyone wants to flesh out their stories more... there's totally a space pirate anthology open. I kid you not: http://www.martinus.us/subs.html (scroll down to Yarr! A Space Pirate Anthology). Subs are due November 1 - Ready, set, arr!

Lunatic Space Pirates Falling in Love During Free Fall-- Sheena

For this blogaround, we're all sharing a prompt to show how we would write a story based on the trigger

Lunatic Space Pirates Falling in Love During Free Fall.

Okay, so the first thing I do is stare at those words for a few... minutes. In that time,  phrases start to separate.

 Space Pirates, for example tell me the genre. We're talking scifi. And pirate means thief to me, so we know the character's motivation is to steal something so rare they had to go to space to find it.

The free fall is interesting to me. I don't think it's falling if there isn't something to crash into, so the location of my story will be far above a planet. A dangerous not earth planet, so if they survive the fall, there's still a story there. And since they are in space to steal something, it could be the planet that houses the thing they are trying to steal, because the very thing a thief fears more than death, is getting caught.

So a story is starting to emerge. High above a red swirling planet, something bad happens to the ship, and brings the notice, (and weapon fire) of the people on the planet below, so these thieves silently escape their ship, and then something else bad happens, and they are cut off from control, so they are free falling to certain death on this red swirling planet below them, and even if they survive the crash, (and the fall) they might be caught, but still they are hopeful that there's a chance for them to steal this thing they really need, and getting away.

Okay so now I have to figure out what this thing is, and why they really need it... but I got nothing.

Maybe to do that I should go back to the prompt.

Falling in love reflects a story arc. It's a process with a beginning, middle and end. It also reflects the action of the story which is falling to their deaths.

And then there is the word lunatic.

To be honest, lunatic was the word that made my creative side perk up on the very first reading, so I saved it for last, so I can savor it. I love stories where the POV character is slightly crazy. I love exploring madness in all its forms.

 And falling towards one's death is a high stress environment. Anyone could go crazy in the vacuum of space.

So this is where my twist happens.

POV Character is all alone, trying to retrieve something...a medicine, a get out of jail free card, something necessary to save the person they will be falling in love with. Because the story arc needs a beginning, it's a person who the POV character finds slightly annoying, but still is attached to. They aren't in love yet, or at least they don't know yet that they are in love. Something goes wrong, and draws attention of the antagonist, and POV character could run away, but must sacrifice their own safety in order to try to get this thing for this annoying person who they are probably cursing out right about now.

New plan. New disaster, and again the character chooses to keep going instead of finding their own safety, and disaster number three happens, and POV person is falling uncontrollably in space towards certain death. Attempt after attempt to save themselves fail, but eventually the hero get the spinning under control, right when cracks appear across the visor. And the stress sends POV character into a descent of madness. They see this annoying person they are trying to save falling with them, which is impossible since they are on their deathbed, or imprisoned somewhere, and after telling them all the ways they are stupid, their hands meet, and the person falling realizes that they can't live without this person. There a joke or a moment of beauty, trying to distract from the danger, and the POV wishes the person could be there for real. Then right before an insane delusion of a kissing scene, or an almost kiss, there's an interruption. Shrapnel, or a bullet, or pain, and the person wakes up from their insanity, tries one last Hail Mary attempt to save themselves, which doesn't work, and they realize they are about to die, and then one of the early attempts finally works, and last second they are able to save themselves...or maybe they won't. I love tragic endings too.

And now the last thing I decide. The character. I always choose the character last, because I need to know what they will lose before I decide who gets to lose it. Because falling in love, for someone who wants to fall in love, isn't a sacrifice, so it's not something to lose. Falling towards death is really bad for someone with a fear of heights.

So this is a person with a history. Someone broke this person's heart, or trust, and they don't want to trust anyone ever again. This is a person who has cut ties with their history, maybe even with their former name and planet, and left on a space ship, so that because of relative time, everyone they know is dead by now. So this person is seriously prickly... Or maybe they aren't. Maybe this is a person who faced heartbreak, but didn't let it break them. Maybe they are nice to everyone, except this one person who reminds them of the person who broke them. Or maybe they were friends, and this person thought it meant something more.

Time to make some decisions.

My first instinct is to make this person a girl. I love the dichotomy of a girl saving a boy, and then realizing she's fallen for him, but... I don't know, it feels done, like that is a story I've told before, so...yup. I'm making this POV character a dude. And yes, I know a boy saving a girl has also been told a thousand times, but not by me, so I'd rather surprise myself.

So it's a guy... A guy who has lost everything, and still chooses to smile. He's smart, and resourceful, and not afraid to steal, so that means he thinks everything sort of belongs to him. He's confident, but afraid of heights, and afraid of attachments. Now he sounds like Captain Kirk, so I've got to change something.

He doesn't have any legs. No, he's covered in acid burns, from the thing that made him not trust people. No that might make it too dark. He needs more flaws, and more humanity.

Got it. He has a tangled family history, and HE made a mistake that made him lose everything. HE hurt someone who trusted him, and HE is carrying so much guilt he doesn't feel lovable.

Except maybe by this girl. There's this girl he met somewhere who makes him laugh, who makes him into someone kinder. When he's with her, he's someone he can like. He knows he could pursue things with her, except that he doesn't want to put her in the position where he could hurt her. Although he trusts her, he still doesn't trust himself.  So he walked away, even though he knew it meant hurting her, it was the lesser kind of hurt, the kind she could survive.

But when he left, something bad happened, and she got caught up into something, a scheme I think to earn enough money to start a different life. She was caught by the same people who own said treasure, who live on this planet. I.E. The antagonist.

Oh, a love triangle. The girl is caught, and the guy who owns the treasure is super handsome.

That's been done. The girl is caught, and the LADY who owns the treasure is surprisingly kind.

Erm. The antagonist (no gender yet) needs the treasure for a reason. It's medicine? No, that's too easy. It's something terribly important, like the last peg to an engine, or the last chance to go to this planet where the Antagonist's family is. Erm. It's a valuable piece of art painted over a sheet of unobtainium. It's a thing of tremendous value, but is sentimental value to the antagonist. It's a person, the child of the antagonist, who was born with amazing abilities. It's an animal, the last of its kind, and its bones when ground become a drug that is so rare and worshiped, because it gives the user magical abilities.

Oh. I like that.

So the Antagonist, (no gender, because it's an alien who has a different kind of gender than humans recognize), is a protector of this really rare swimming animal. It breeds them, and then sells the bones, but a strange disease caused most of the animals to die, so there's only a few left. The antagonist owns the entire planet, and has enough resources for major weapons, and security to protect the animals. When the girl was caught, she was going to be given to the animal as food, but the animal protected her. Once bonded with this strange swimming creature, she was given the job to start taking care of this animal.

So she doesn't want to be rescued.

Delicious.

Okay, so now we have a story that is complicated enough to start to plot.

My next step would be to create and plot out secondary characters. And since this story just moved beyond the free fall, the hero will survive, and will need help. so maybe the pilot of the ship, other Animal caretakers, Allies on the planet that can help hero reach the girl-- maybe an ally who's purposes run cross-ways from the hero. Then I'd figure out the rules of the world, the way the science and technology of the world work, aspects of drug culture that have shifted society, figure out the moral line of the characters, and then I'd figure out what a happy ever after would look like. Oh, and figure out how long the hero's insanity will last, hopefully a good long time. Because...yummy.

Then I'd plot out archetypes.

Hero- Dude McDudehead (Goal to save the girl, and steal the bones in order to release the girl)
Antagonist- Alien Druglord (Goal to protect its creatures, and its bottom line)
Sidekick- Pilot of Ship, friendly but at a distance. (Goal to help friend, and get the payday)
Skeptic - Ally on planet. (Only in it for the payday)
Guardian- GIRL McLoveinterest (Moral line, Goal to protect Dude McDudehead and Protect the Creatures)
Contagionist- Ally on Planet who wants to take down the Antagonist, by any means necessary, and will betray hero
Emotion- The Animal itself. Strong emotional telepathy.
Reason- Girl McLoveInterest's friend and fellow caretaker. (Possible love triangle. Does she choose to stay with logical dude and take care of this Animal she loves?)

Then I go through and assign gender to the archetypes.

Sidekick, Skeptic, and Contagionist all need genders and ages. Let's make them all girls, because we can.

Sidekick is an older lady, like Mags. She's the touchstone of the story. Common, kind, loyal.
Skeptic, is a sassy alien type. Short. Fierce. Lots of guns, bombs and knives. Swears in her native tongue.
Contagionist. She's the Mrs. Brown of the story. Human. Ambitious. Knits. She's a plotter. Widowed with a significant fortune. Former buyer of Whatever Dude McDude was selling.

Then I do some character analysis, and figure out all the specific details about these characters. They need a name, age, a nationality, a backstory, character quirks, catchphrases, personal style, fears, inside jokes, attachments.

Then I'd plot the full story from the Dude's POV, The Girl's POV, the Antagonist's POV, and the Contagionist's POV. And possibly Reason's if I choose to go the love triangle route. Which I will.

There's a good chance you've started skimming by this point, if not stopped reading altogether. I'm betting plotting isn't as interesting to read as it is to write.

But in case you are reading these words, I thank you. This is how I plot. I take an idea and twist it, until I find something that has been done before, and then I twist it again, and again, and then again. I find one failure after another, and choose my hero based on what they have to lose, because the common theme of all my stories is making the absolute worst thing happen to the character so that they can survive it. The hero must be someone who fails, and sacrifices, and keeps going.

Happy plotting!
~Sheena

For more Space Pirate plots, check out these by...
Karen
Trina
Melanie

Lunatic Space Pirates Take Three...By Melanie

For the next two weeks, we are taking turns explaining how we would go about writing a story based on this prompt:

Lunatic Space Pirates Falling in Love

During Free Fall

The best way I can describe my writing process is this: I take three separate points on the plane of my imagination and connect them, and when I do, they magically turn into a picture in my head. That picture is like a snapshot of the lives of my characters, and I write to get to that moment.

I didn’t feel particularly inspired by the prompt, so I moved on to finding the second point. Finding the second point is like a treasure hunt! I might find it while I’m walking around outside or watching the news. It might be in a book I’m reading, a TV show I’m watching or a song I hear. Anything, really, but it will typically be something completely different from what I’m working on.

I walked around for days thinking, “Ooh! Listen to this news report! It’s full of story ideas. Will IT be the thing that inspires me?” Nope. “Ooh! Look at this flower. Is THIS the thing?” Nope. And the whole time, one song was stuck in my head. My daughter is a HUGE Broadway fan, and lately she’s been obsessed with a show called Memphis, and in particular one song called the Music of My Soul.

But all I felt was pity, for he never understood. How could people be so bad, who made me feel so good? It went right through my body. It dragged me by my heart. It shot out from my fingertips and tore me right apart. It broke down all my senses. It made me feel so home. See I was lost until I found the music of my soul.

Wow. That’s powerful stuff. And I WANTED that to be my second point. I TRIED to make it my second point. But it wasn’t. It got me headed on the right path though, and I only dreamed about it being my story for a couple of hours before the second point burst upon me, in all its glory (at three o clock in the morning). My second point is NOT Memphis. It is Bonnie and Clyde, the other musical my daughter listens to incessantly. 

Memphis is the story of a white man and a black woman who fall in love. It’s the story of an epic battle between music and prejudice. Bonnie and Clyde, on the other hand, is a story about two selfish brats who fall in love and decide they are so much better than the people around them that they can take whatever they want, even if they have to kill people to get it. (I realize this kind of tragedy can be powerful. I just don't want to write it.)**

I didn’t want Bonnie and Clyde to be the thing I was looking for, but I knew it was because I felt all tingly when I thought about it, almost like my muse was sprinkling pixie dust over me. Ideas started coming together in my head like tumblers on a (really complicated) lock. After about half an hour of this I silently reminded my brain that this story idea is for a blog post, not for an actual book, and it really ought to shut up so I could go back to sleep. It didn’t work. Instead I thought:

I can’t write such shallow people. I will physically rebel from doing it. Well, maybe they could start out shallow, and grow over the course of the story. NO. Not that shallow. I don’t care if it would be great literature. I categorically refuse. Maybe I could add a third character who could take all the shallow parts. But what if…

Boom goes the dynamite.

At 3:30 in the morning I found my third point and connected them all. My third point is Edward Snowden. His story fascinates me, but it also frustrates me terribly, because every article I ever read about him is seen through the lens of an extremely opinionated person. There are so many lies and twisted truths that I can’t even figure out what is real.

When I collected the three points, it made a brilliant picture of two people breaking someone out of jail (on a spaceship, which makes the jailbreak a little unproductive, since a spaceship is kind of like a prison anyway.)

Here is my story:

Evan has been portrayed as a Robin Hood by some of the media and as the most vile of degenerates by the rest. His sister, Bonnie, has not seen him since they were young, but she idolizes him, and is sure he is a hero, not a villain. When Evan is transported across the solar system she sees her chance to break him out of jail. She is aided in her attempt by a good looking young man named Cade who reveres Evan as the best thief out there. Cade thinks this jailbreak is a spectacular opportunity to embark on a life of crime. Only time will tell which of them is right.

Now that I have the framework of a story that makes me want to write, it is easy enough to build all the other pieces into it:

• Lunatic...one definition is wildly or recklessly foolish which fits Cade to a T.

• Space pirates...I suppose that will happen when they take over the ship, which they will have to do once they rescue the older brother, or all 3 of them will end up in prison.

• Falling in love...the sister and the wannabe thief

• Free Fall...This will also happen when they take over the ship. They will shut the engines down, which will technically put them in free fall, even though they will simply be drifting. (I learned this from wikipedia this morning.)

• Heck, I can probably even throw Music of My Soul into the plot now--I'll give Edmund a backstory filled with breaking prejudicial lines by falling in love with a singer from the wrong side of the galaxy. :)

**Please forgive me if I’m mangling these plot lines. I’ve never seen the shows, just listened to the music, so these are the storylines I’ve concocted in my head. 

Lunatic Space Pirates Falling in Love During Free Fall

So that's our prompt. This seems ripe for a romantic comedy, but sometimes the obvious is just too obvious. If the idea is too easy, doesn't stretch the boundaries and really explore the concept, even a well written story can be difficult to sell. At best, you'll get comments like, 'well written, but not very original'. Never stop at your first idea. This is the brainstorming stage; you want a typhoon, not an LA drizzle. And even if you go with your first idea, figure out ways you can twist it.

During the brainstorming stage, you might decide to alter or discard part of the idea. In this case, maybe they're not lunatics, maybe they don't fall in love, or maybe you eliminate free fall. This is fine. Ideas need room to evolve and this is where you'll start to find out what kind of story you really want to write. If you're writing for an anthology prompt, make sure to keep the important thematic bits per their guidelines.

This is the point where plot and character start to overlap for me. I take one of the ideas and follow the line of thought through to the end. But then I ask what kind of character would make this story most interesting. Often, I come up with, 'If I do Plot A, then I'd use this character and it would end like this. If I do Plot B, it would go this way.' And this gets batted around for awhile, sometimes substituting characters or creating backgrounds for them. Example: The janitor on the pirate ship who is a burned-out former special ops guy finds himself lusting after the Captain but she doesn't pay him any notice, and his confidence is in the toilet after his last mission gone wrong where lots of innocents were killed.

The janitor is just one (wordy) example, but let's run with that. So now we ask, what's his journey? What is he striving for? At this point the janitor needs to be the protagonist because he has everything to lose, and the most to gain. Also, play with the gender of your protag. See how changing their gender changes the story. In this case, I didn't want to have the needy woman chasing after a man, even if she is tough. I want to flip expectations, so the protag is male. At this point, I also decide the basics of his personality. Is he surly or cheerful? Bold, or shy? Quirks? Likable? How do those things change how he responds to the situation?

It's pretty obvious what he's striving for, right? He needs to find his confidence again and use it to win the Captain's heart. Now a few more questions crop up. Do we let him succeed? If so, what's the happy ending? If not, what's the tragic ending? Then the big question, what is learned in the end? This learning can be by the character, and/or the reader. This is where your theme starts to develop. Don't let that word, theme, scare you. If you have a solid plot, it will evolve out of the story naturally, though feel free to help it along if you recognize it. Just don't beat it to death.

I want to give our protag a happy ending. Admittedly, I rarely go tragic; it's just not in my nature. I like to have a sense of victory and accomplishment. So for the happy ending he needs to get his confidence back. (Getting the girl is secondary, and not actually necessary for him to be successful.)

Throughout the story, he'll need obstacles to overcome, and hopefully, each one will raise the stakes which increases the tension. Maybe in the first, they have to fend off being boarded and he gets into the fight, after vowing he would never fight again. After that, he changes his parameters so that he will fight to protect his own. Also, the Captain notices him for the first time.

Then, maybe, a tactical situation comes up that he is particularly adept in, from his spec ops training, and he has to decide whether to get involved. It was his command decision that got the orphanage blown up so he's gun-shy about making any decisions. But he feels strongly and overcomes his doubts to advise her. She listens (because of the first encounter), and agrees and the task goes well because of his advice. Confidence points and respect, earned.

At this point, you'll see a lot of 'maybes' in my notes. Some stay, some leave. This is truly the hammering out stage. Ideas fly in and out until I pound out a reasonable plot.

The next trial really needs to raise the stakes. Something needs to set our protag back and then force him to face that of which he is most afraid. Then, after sinking as deep as he can go, he needs to confront that fear, stand up, and take action. Hint: Innocents are involved.

The important part here is that throughout the story you've set up this ending accomplishment, making it feel right for both plot, and character. Our janitor's interactions with the Captain need to have been meaningful and leading to this. That's the flesh to this skeleton and you can't know exactly how it's going to turn out until you start writing it. I've had endings change on me two-thirds of the way through because the characters evolved differently than I expected.

This is where I've learned the value of outlining in a way that doesn't remotely stifle creativity. The skeleton of a plot is ultimately flexible so even if you're a pantser, this method doesn't dramatically tie you down. If just gives you an idea of where you're going. Part skeleton, part road map.

So this is my way of getting to a story. It may seem haphazard, or it may not. But hopefully I've given you some ideas for how to approach story construction. The only real rule is to do what works for you. Oh, and keep writing.