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This is number thirty-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
And so is The Staircase of Dragon Jerico. Or at least it will be this week. There is always a sense of joy, accomplishment, and let-down when I reach the end of NaNoWriMo. Next week: “TGIO.”
This is number thirty-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
Well, the US Thanksgiving Holiday is coming this week. I’ve made a reservation at a local restaurant for my ‘traditional’ prime rib dinner. Thanksgiving’s also a time traditionally reserved for catching up on NaNoWriMo for those who are behind. Then we have the ever-popular “Sprint to the Finish.” Next week.
This is number thirty-six in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
With The Staircase of Dragon Jerico, I have a little less leeway regarding how far off the main route I can wander. So, the developmental outline looks very different than the top level outline I disclosed just two weeks ago.
Act I
Chapter 1: Who Was the Artist? The story of the staircase in the Jerico household, and who slept with the lady of the house.
1. Everyone stops and stares at the staircase.
2. Legends abound regarding how Drake Jerico imagined he was descended from a mighty Celtic dragon.
3. A hundred years ago, Levi Jerico discovered a burglar in his home and shot him on the stairs.
4. A third world queen visited Jerico City and had her portrait painted on the stairs.
5. Thirty-five years ago, Jacqueline Jerico married Raymond Carver on the stairs.
6. 200 years ago, Isolde LeClerc was seduced on the stairs by Joseph Carver just days after she arrived at the house.
7. The line of descendants of the Jerico household are actually descended from Joseph Carver and Isolde LeClerc Jerico, not from Drake Jerico. Now they bear his name.
Chapter 2: An Unhappy Marriage. Happily-ever-after falls apart for Erin and Bruce Silver when Bruce has an affair.
1. Erin and Bruce have arrived in Jerico city and are excited to be house-hunting while Bruce starts his new job as an architectural draftsman at JeriCorp.
2. Finding the perfect place to raise a family.
3. Bruce meeting Shannon Duval and flirting.
4. A holiday meeting sends Bruce and Shannon to bed.
5. Royce Duval, president of JeriCorp, discovers them and immediately fires Bruce.
6. Trying to explain himself, Bruce quickly gives up on his marriage and deserts Erin. She files for divorce.
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.
1. Shannon and Royce argue and she points out his history of affairs.
2. He insists that the rule has always been ‘Not with anyone in the company.’
3. Shannon vows to get back at Royce for firing Bruce.
4. Shannon begins prowling for the best person with whom to get revenge and arrives at Preston Carver, the Chairman of the Board.
Chapter 4: The Top of the Pyramid. Preston Carver goes to his weekly dinner with mother at Jerico House.
1. Jacqueline resumes what is obviously an ongoing diatribe about getting Preston married.
2. Preston protests that he likes his life as a bachelor and all women want is his money.
3. Jacqueline presents an argument on the benefits of marrying a gold digger, as long as she understands the rules.
4. Jacqueline suggests a woman Preston should go out with and then insists she will arrange things.
Chapter 5: Survival of the Fittest. Erin determines to put her life together even if it means taking the lowliest jobs to get her through.
1. With Bruce abandoning her, Erin loses the house to the bank and has to file bankruptcy.
2. Erin moves into a rooming house and takes a job as a waitress in the local diner.
3. A nice and very quiet guy comes in every Thursday for lunch. She likes him.
4. Erin gets a response to her job applications and gets her hair done for an interview at JeriCorp.
Act II
Chapter 6: 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.
1. Preston puts together a proposal for a new development village, obsessed with the planning and drafting. He stays locked in his office/apartment for weeks.
2. Preston yells at his assistant who breaks down crying and quits.
3. Jacqueline insists Preston go out on a blind date with a woman she has selected, and “try things out.”
4. Preston’s date is disastrous and he returns to his office/apartment to get ready to explain the new development to Royce.
5. Preston yells for his assistant and when he gets no response, he calls HR and finds out she really did quit, but they are interviewing for a new assistant. He tells them what was wrong with the last one.
Chapter 7: A Step Up. Banking on her education, Erin takes a job as Assistant to the Chairman and is told that if she can last there six months, she’ll be moved to a position in marketing for the company.
1. Erin practices her interview techniques that have been unused for a couple of years.
2. She waits on the nice guy again and he wishes her luck on her interview.
3. She talks to HR at JeriCorp and is told the list of rules and duties she will need to fulfill the position. HR says he is “special.” Erin decides, “So, I’ll still be a waitress, but a better paid one.”
4. Erin accepts the position with the promise that if she can last six months, HR will find her another position in the company.
ETC.
The Save the Cat structure has three acts. As you can see from what what I’ve written here, there are more chapters already than what had been in the high-level outline. I’m sure that as I write it, there will be even more. But you can see, at this point, everything looks like it is working out just fine. Erin and Preston have established a relationship through the diner and now, unknown to both of them, she is about to become his personal assistant. Everything is set to fall apart in both of their lives!
In reality, as of today, I’ve written 10 chapters and I’m just a bit past this point in the outline. And here we are, only two weeks and 30,000 words into NaNoWriMo! Next week, “Why did I ever commit to this piece of garbage?”
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?”
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