I 'm trying out Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake method of step-by-step drafting, actually ten steps in total. After two weeks, I'm about half way through mapping out the story of Moira and Dylan. My goal is a novella, some 40-50,000 words. Perhaps I'll be able to tell this story a little faster than the three years it usually takes me.
Why this story of Moira and Dylan?
If you've read Standing Stones, you may remember that Dylan left their island home to go to Inverness, seeking work and leaving Moira behind. But he doesn't know that Moira is pregnant. Moira searches for him, can't find him, and winds up in a home for wayward women, baby Rose on the way.
Readers have let me know they want to know what happens next, and they want a 'happy ever after' ending! In fact, just this week my doctor stood in the hall before her next patient to call after me, "You have to write a happy ending. You can't leave them apart like that."
So it's back to Inverness for me!
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| "River Ness, Inverness" by Avarim (Wikipedia) |
I hope so, but I'm drawn to the stories of people who struggle to make a good life for themselves and those they love. For some reason, perhaps my own childhood, I want to write about those working class people who lived in crowded 19th Century tenements, worked in windowless factories, and fought over bread. In Inverness, the elite disdained a district filled with 'Irishers' called Cowgate. Maybe Moira will find Dylan there.
Even as I sit in my office, surrounded by 21st Century luxuries, including more books than I can read, I'm thinking 'happy for now' might be a more realistic fit. For our lives are filled with challenges that change over time, each decade shaped by policies beyond our control, and we grow older. Somehow we face down loss; hopefully, we find love to ease the way.
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