Browbeaten

Stepping back and taking an objective look at my current work-in-progress, The Clockwise Heart, I’m really rather appalled by the shape of the thing.

Let’s equate the shape of a storyline’s rise and fall to that of an eyebrow, shall we?

Traditionally, the book wears a Well-Manicured, Carefully Plucked Arch of the Inquisitive. A slow rise to the climax to an exciting but measured fall.

Yeah, well… My book’s sporting Angry, Slightly Constipated Brow. Scrunched up, sharp waxing and waning of unrestrained action.

Could be a problem.

Anybody have a tweezer?

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

The Jack & Jill Quandary

With the Women’s Fiction arena now clear in my sights, it’s time to decide which of two story arcs do I ride into the party.

Plotline #1: Streamlined story; very complicated people. (i.e… Jack, a recovering alcoholic and borderline schizophrenic, and Jill, a narcissistic personality with deeply-seeded people issues, went up the hill to fetch a pail of water…)

Plotline #2: Very complicated story: streamlined people. (i.e…. Jack and Jill went up the hill in an effort to evade their own government which has turned inexplicably on its own spies and marked the pair for death; while there, the couple feigns fetching a pail of water while signaling their compatriots, an underground network of redeemed assassins.)

Of course, Plotline #1.5 would be ideal, but that would mean a novel approximately 450,000 words long… Um, no.

Aargh!!

I’ll keep you updated.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe