aroslav: Blog

This is number thirty-five in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

Sometimes I have resorted to a spreadsheet listing all my characters and their traits, but I often write stories with a hundred or more characters. By comparison, this one will be focused on just these seven characters. I felt the paragraph or two describing each would be adequate as I started writing. Next week, I’ll discuss “The Deep Outline.”

Enjoy!
author Devon Layne, aka Nathan Everett

This is number thirty-four in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

BEFORE I COULD START creating an outline for my NaNoWriMo project, I felt I really needed a title for my new work in progress. What goes into creating a title for a work?

First of all, I needed to examine the theme and pitch for the book and see what I thought would work. In my case, I also had the bookends to consider. There would be an opening scene and a closing scene that set the stage for the story but weren’t actually a part of it.

Since this would be a work of ‘literary fiction,’ I decided that I liked titles that followed the format of “____ of the ____”. Here are some examples:

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling

So, what was my subject and what was it ‘of?’

In keeping with the idea of a bookend for the story that would paint the time and set the scene, I decided on a unique staircase in a wealthy family’s mansion that would be the silent witness of much of the intrigue in the family. Yes, a staircase. I started playing with what that would look like.

Staircase of the Vanities
Staircase of the Bonnevilles
Staircase of the Massengills
Staircase of the Treadwills
Staircase of the Pembertons
Staircase of the Bellinghams

I was trying to make it the staircase of a family, so I had to pick a name for the ancestral home and family. I decided they would be the Jerico family. (A surname that has about 220 people in the US.) But the more I thought about it, the more I decided it needed something to modify the family name. I thought about what would make this staircase unique and decided it would be carved in the shape of a dragon.

The Staircase of Dragon Jerico

This is a working title. I’ve often changed the title of a book after I started writing it or even after it was finished.

For example, back in 2009, I wanted to write a story that revolved around finding and preserving a legendary ‘other book’ (other than the Gutenberg Bible) printed by Johannes Gutenberg. I’d studied the subject for twenty years collecting information. As a print historian, I could think of nothing better than the title Gutenberg’s Other Book. But that sounded more like a history book, than an intellectual thriller. Following the pattern of Dan Brown thrillers, like The DaVinci Code, I chose to retitle the book The Gutenberg Rubric. In it, people would also discover what a rubric was in Gutenberg’s day and age. It became one of my most successful selling books and continues to sell today. (Available on Bookapy.)

This has happened to me many times. My first published novel was originally called Security and Exchange, when it was offered as part of an anthology to raise charitable contributions for Microsoft’s Giving Campaign. People thought it was a book about computer security and email. The cyber mystery did much better when it was released as For Blood or Money!

Just understand that my having chosen the working title of The Staircase of Dragon Jerico does not mean that is what the book will be released as! It is the working title.

My preference in a story like this is to create chapter titles with a single line to indicate the principal action as my first outline.

Chapter 1: Who Was the Artist? The story of the staircase in the Jerico household, and who slept with the lady of the house.
Chapter 2: An Unhappy Marriage. Happily-ever-after falls apart for Erin and Bruce Silver when Bruce has an affair.
Chapter 3: The Other Woman. Shannon Duval regrets destroying Bruce’s marriage, even though her own husband, the president of the company, is stepping out on her.
Chapter 4: Survival of the Fittest. Erin determines to put her life together even if it means taking the lowliest jobs to get her through.
Chapter 5: Creative Genius. Preston Carver, Chairman of JeriCorp, has another great idea for his company, but Royce Duval, the CEO, will get the credit, of course.
Chapter 6: A Step Up. Banking on her education, Erin takes a job as Assistant to the Chairman and is told that if she can last six months in the difficult position, she’ll be moved to a less stressful position in the company.
Chapter 7: Object of Desire. Royce sees the Chairman’s assistant and decides she would be better as his mistress.
Chapter 8: Subterfuge. Erin recognizes her new boss as her favorite customer from the diner, but he doesn’t recognize her.
Chapter 9: Out of the Zone. Preston is forced to make a public announcement and freezes up on stage, until Erin rescues him.
Chapter 10: Conflict of Interest. Shannon believes Erin is out for revenge on her by seducing her husband, Royce.
Chapter 11: Proxy Fight. The board attempts to oust Preston as Chairman and discovers he controls the majority of shares.
Chapter 12: Rescue Me. Preston runs after Erin to stop her from leaving the company and town, professing his love, and proposing marriage.
Chapter 13: A Family United. The bookend chapter reveals that just as Preston is descended from Isolde and Joseph Carver, Erin is descended from Isolde and Drake Jerico, but, of course, no one knows that.

In this outline, I’ve hit the major clutch points of the novel and have named the principal characters. The next step is to fill in the blanks in the outline by going a level deeper with what the action points will be in each chapter. If this progresses as outlines typically do, by the time I’m ready to start writing, there will be more than the thirteen chapters above, and some may have changed significantly. Over the next two weeks, as I begin writing the story, I’ll also release my character sketches and world building documents.

In three days, my Sausage Grinder tier patrons will get the chance to watch this story take shape on a daily basis in November. Whatever I get written that day will be posted in its rough form, exclusively for Sausage Grinder Patrons.

There are many more considerations yet as the story takes shape. I’ll continue writing about the development process through to the end of the draft. Next week: “Who are these people in my head?”

This is number thirty-three in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

I’M SITTING HERE with a dozen story ideas that I have written a logline for. I’ve written a pitch for each logline. Some are pretty good. How do I go about deciding what to pursue?

With great difficulty. I mentioned a few weeks ago that for me, writer’s block is often the result of too many ideas trying to worm their way out of my head at the same time. Which will get my attention?

First, I read through all the loglines again, including the ones that I generated long after the blog post on loglines was first drafted back in September. Some of those loglines just leave me cold. For example:

Girl escapes from father’s incestuous intentions, taking a few precious items, and finding work in a neighboring city as a housekeeper, until the owner of the house falls in love.

I wrote that logline based on the German fairy tale “Allerleiruah” or “All-Kinds-Of-Furs.” I just didn’t like the implications of the first part of the story. In some versions, the father actually rapes his daughter. The only interesting part of it was how she found her future husband by being disguised and appearing at dances he gave, then disappearing again as a scullery maid. So, I separated that part out as a concept that I’d keep, but discarded the rest of the pitch.

Then there was this one:

Youngest son stumbles through a quest, succeeding where his older and smarter brothers failed, arousing jealousy and treachery as they attempt to take what he has won.

I didn’t want to deal with magic in this year’s story. I have no problem with magic as I’ve used it in other stories, like Nathan Everett’s Steven George & The Dragon, available on Bookapy. It’s also a magic quest fairy tale. I’ll probably do a magic story again, but this one just sounded trite. It was based on the fairy tale, “The Golden Bird.” I did like the surprise revelation of who the fox was and filed that idea away.

Young woman is caught in a lust-inflamed dream, not realizing her dream-lover is the flesh-and-blood enemy her family has sworn to kill.

I threw out the entire concept of this creeper story which is based on John Keats’ narrative poem, “The Eve of St. Agnes.” But there was a technique he used that I really liked. The entire first five stanzas were about an ‘ancient Beadsman’ praying for sinners as he apparently dies on an ash heap. The sole purpose of this prologue seems to be to set the background scene for what is to occur. And in the last stanza of the poem, we find him finally sleeping or dead on his bed of ashes having prayed for a thousand sinners. I filed that technique away and decided I’d like to include a bookend for this year’s NaNovel. Here’s another I found appealing:

Man interprets a woman’s romantic attention as a thinly-veiled attempt to gain control of his business, but his attempts to rebuff her constantly lead them closer to each other.

I liked this twist on the billionaire next door theme and decided to keep the concept of a romance made difficult because of the difference in economic class of the two people—possibly even employment. I felt I needed a real reason for them to be thrown together, though, and developed a further construct. She, not knowing he is all that rich, falls for the guy at table three in the little diner and constantly gives him little touches, extras on his plate, and her best smile. It never occurs to her that anyone who was really rich would eat at the hole-in-the-wall restaurant.

Socially awkward genius inventor hides behind his CEO’s charisma to manage company, all the while being ridiculed for his stupidity and incompetence.

I liked this general theme and set up, but it needs something besides their public personae to make it work. Can’t just be the charismatic vs. the socially awkward unless there is some kind of critical point at which the socially awkward one has to rise above his phobia in order to win both the business and the girl.

So—drumroll, please—here’s what I’ve arrived at for NaNoWriMo 2023.

Woman stranded in a new town after a short and bitter divorce waits tables in a diner where she meets the man of her dreams; but he is a socially inept recluse constantly on guard against gold diggers. When the two are thrown together, mistrust and misunderstanding nearly destroy any chance of a relationship.

Pitch

When Erin’s divorce was finalized, she had little hope and no prospects. The sole bright spot in her week was the poor fellow who came into the diner on Thursdays and became her regular customer. She had no idea who he was, but of all her customers, he was the one who treated her kindly. She’d never really seen his face, because he kept a hoodie sweatshirt pulled over his eyes and only removed his mask while his head was down and he was eating.

Preston only got out of his penthouse office/apartment once a week. His hoodie and facemask kept him from being recognized as the billionaire creative genius behind JeriCorp Architects. He found Erin’s simple attention to be refreshing, and it enabled him to overcome his shyness and anxiety so that they actually shared a few sentences of conversation when he came in. Of course, she was too pretty to be interested in him as more than a customer. And if she knew who he really was, it would skew the relationship out of whack.

When Erin says she is going to apply for a better job, Preston encourages her, wishing her well. Neither has any idea that the job she will get will throw the two of them together as she becomes his personal assistant. But the mask mandate and change of venue keeps either one from recognizing the other.

Preston is forced into a situation where he must make a public presentation—something he has always avoided by having a president who was handsome and charismatic and was the public face of JeriCorp. When Preston predictably freezes during the presentation, Erin steps in to complete it and sell the project. The cost, however, is recognition of one another. Preston is convinced she was stalking him, especially when his president’s wife accuses her of having an affair with her husband.

Erin quits and leaves his office, but Preston’s mother berates him for losing such a wonderful woman who was obviously in love with him.

Will Preston be in time to stop Erin from leaving town? And if he is in time, is there any hope the two will find their way back together?

Not perfect yet? Well, that’s what November is for!

Of course, now I’m excited to start writing right away, but there are still steps and it’s not November yet. Since this is all about planning the novel, next week I’ll talk about “Creating an Outline.”

This is number thirty-two in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

IS IT NECESSARY to write a pitch for my book before I start writing it? Maybe not. But I do believe it is helpful, and as part of my prep for NaNoWriMo, I’ll be trying to craft a pitch for my unwritten novel that will make people want to buy it.

That’s really the difference between a logline and a pitch. The logline piques people’s interest and makes them want to know more. If you see the logline for a movie on TV, you might decide to check it out and see if it’s interesting. It takes more than that, though, for you to buy a ticket to see the movie or to plunk down real dollars to buy the book. You need a good sales pitch.

I figure that if I can’t craft a pitch that will make people want to buy or read the book, then there isn’t much sense writing it. (There are exceptions to that rule. I’ve often written an article or book that I know no one will want to read, but I feel it needs to be written anyway.)

The pitch is usually considerably longer than the logline, however, it comes in two flavors: the elevator pitch and the full pitch. Here’s an example of the elevator pitch for Nathan Everett's The Gutenberg Rubric. See last week’s post for the logline.

Just weeks before production of the great Gutenberg Bible was completed, the inventor of movable type printing was sued by his financial partner for having embezzled funds for a different project. When Gutenberg refused to share the secret project with his partner, the court awarded the entire printing operation to Johan Fust and left Gutenberg with nothing.

What was so valuable to Gutenberg that he would willingly enter poverty to protect the secret from his business partner?

Two rare-book librarians are the unlikely heroes as they race time, biblio-terrorists, and Homeland Security across three continents to find and preserve the legendary ‘other book’ printed by Johannes Gutenberg.

The idea of the elevator pitch is that you enter an elevator with an agent and before it reaches the next floor, you convince him to invite you in to tell him more. As you can see, this isn’t just a tickler with a hook to pique the interest. It is a tight sales pitch. The agent in question will immediately ask, “Is that true about Gutenberg?” (Based on my actual experience with the book.)

It helps that it is true. Only the logline at the end of the pitch is about the novel. The rest of the pitch is to get the agent to say “I’d like to see that.”

And what do you do when you get that far? Then it is time to close the sale. The idea behind the pitch—sometimes referred to as the back cover blurb—is to get the reader to commit to reading the book.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned the planning of Nathan Everett’s City Limits. It involved even more than the index cards, the map, the photos, and the scene-by-scene outline. It started with the logline:

Homeless man stumbles into town just in time to dive into a raging river and save a drowning toddler, instantly becoming the town’s hero—and losing his memory.

Okay, we have the basics of the story. Let’s take a look at the elevator pitch:

Gee Evars wandered into Rosebud Falls on Independence Day just in time to rescue a toddler from the rushing torrent of the Rose River. And to lose his memory. In an attempt to make Rosebud Falls his home, Gee becomes a local hero and inadvertently leads a revolt that changes the balance of power in the town. But will he ever know who he really is?

Then we move to the full pitch:

Gee Evars stumbles into Rosebud Falls, exhausted and dehydrated, but snaps into action to save a drowning toddler from a raging river. Injured, Gee is taken to the hospital, where he discovers he has lost his memory and his wallet. His identity uncertain, Gee sets about making Rosebud Falls his home.

He becomes a local hero, falling for investigative reporter Karen Weisman, who continues to search for his identity as he seems always to be where he is needed most—even when his actions are misunderstood. He changes the balance of power among the seven founding families who rule over the town.

While walking through the mystical forest—the town’s centerpiece and primary economic resource—he eats one of the poisonous nuts and falls into a hallucinatory trance. When he awakens, he discovers what it means to be both the City’s Champion and the Defender of the Forest. Rosebud Falls will never be the same after its encounter with the man with no memory.

When it came time to write the sequel, Wild Woods, I went through much the same process. (Both City Limits and Wild Woods are now available from Bookapy.) I needed to refresh people on the first book and tell them where the second was going.

Gee Evars wandered into town without a memory a few months ago. In that time, he has become the city champion, has led a proxy takeover of the city’s biggest business, and has become a spokesman for the Forest and the Wild Woods. The fence came down between the two on the night of the election approving annexation of the area.

But now, Gee is faced with a new reality. The Wild Woods holds secrets that some people would kill to maintain. Someone needs to manage the exploration of the Wild Woods. Someone needs to eat the nut. If the woods has been used to manufacture drugs and to traffic in children, someone needs to go in and find out if anyone is still in danger.

That task falls to Gee and a small army of high school volunteers who are determined to clean their woods and make it safe and welcoming.

And when abused and brainwashed children wander out of the woods and into town, who better to teach them and bring them back to society than the man who also has no memory?

The pitch is also what you normally read in the listing for a book or on its back cover. It helps to have it in front of you while you are writing the book. That way, you know you are on track as you write.

Of course, all this discourse about how to write the pitch has still left me lacking a storyline for NaNoWriMo. Just two more weeks until I need to start writing. Oh, what shall I do? Next week: “Committing to the Story.”

The cast and first chapter of Over Exposure, book 5 of the "Photo Finish" series, have posted this morning. The book is now available on Bookapy as well.

Nate is ready to start his junior year in college, but first he has to make a trip to Los Angeles to consult on the film being based on his photography style. He'll have to return to LA repeatedly through the year before the movie is released.

Classes will be more complicated this year as Nate focuses on the professional instruction rather than the strictly academic. As an upper classman, some new educational experiences are available to Nate and he gets to use his passport for international travel. His world is expanding.

And old problems resurface as former constable Clyde Warren makes some wild accusations and the draft board decides to make things difficult for Nate. All in the 36 chapters of Over Exposure, posting on Thursdays and Sundays.

There was a small glitch in posting this morning and chapter 1 posted over half an hour after the cast list, but everything is up and running now.