Where Do We Go From Here

...now that all of the nominees have shrunk to one / and how do we spend our time, knowing we have to make something work?

(apologies to the Alan Parsons Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft.)

First, though, I want to mention how incredibly happy and relieved I was when we made our choice for the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas. I only mention it because the feelings of happiness and relief took me by surprise -- sure, I expected to feel some relief, but I also expected to feel a little bit of buyer's remorse, the sense that "yeah, we picked a good story, but..." This did not come to pass. Instead, I felt an enormous weight disappear from my shoulders, a weight that I wasn't even cognizant of, and there was a definite thrill, a giddiness, instead of the expected "whew, that's over with." After thinking about it, I realized that unexpected excitement came from the fact that we picked the right story.

But that was then, this is now. We have some decisions to make about how to proceed. What is the first stage of development of Time To Die going to look like? Do we begin to outline the story in more detail? More character work? World-work? When do we know we've done enough to actually start writing the script?

Of course, we'll need all of the above -- outlines, character sketches, world details -- before and/or during the actual writing. But where to start? What kind of Needlessly Complicated Rules do we want to use to creatively constrict ourselves?

Here's my thought: As Grymz (and possibly anyone else reading this blog) knows, I have a thing, almost a neurosis, about plot. "What actually happens?" is my usual cry. I'm concerned about it because I consider it, rightly or wrongly, my weakest point. Often, I try to work this problem out ahead of time by coming up with all the events in the story, from the beginning to the inciting incident (or whatever we're calling it these days) to the rising action and all that all the way to the end. But as I've found out the hard way, a simple creation and recitation of Things That Happen In The Story simply doesn't work. It reads flat. It's missing something.

What's missing is both character and conflict. Who is doing these things, why, and most importantly, what conflict caused these events come about?

As part of the process, I submit this idea: Points of Conflict.

A Point of Conflict is a sentence that describes how a character comes into (duh) conflict with one or more characters, or an inhuman obstacle (like a mountain or a storm). It doesn't immediately resolve the conflict, although there can be a clear suggestion as to the outcome of the conflict. Points of Conflict are not scenes, however. The point of writing a scene is to answer the implied question of the PoC, and potentially set up the circumstances regarding the next PoC.

An example: "September Rose wants the Warden to release her husband's body to her custody, but the Warden feels it's too dangerous to try and get the body in the midst of the prison riot."

Note that the PoC doesn't immediately resolve the conflict, although there can be a clear suggestion as to its outcome. Nor are they scenes, per se -- more like the seed of a scene. The point of writing a scene is to answer the implied question of the PoC, and potentially set up the circumstances regarding the next PoC.

The idea is to come up with as many of these as possible, put them in chronological/plot order, and have a kind of map of the story, expressed entirely through conflicts. This would not supplant a straight-ahead prose description of the story -- that still seems necessary to me, at least to fill in blanks that might not be covered by a PoC list -- and I see the list as continuously evolving; some PoCs would be discarded in favor of others. But it seems like a good way to capture potential good story ideas, especially ones that seem necessary or obvious but where it isn't clear how they'd fit into the overall picture.

(Another example: While doing some preliminary work on my novelization of Little Black Stray, I came up with a character, a Ted Bundy-esque serial killer, the dark side of Griff, the protagonist. This character will take over as the eldest of the prisoners when Geezer leaves, and is one of the primary reasons that Griff wants to protect and hide Kamara. So how the fuck do I not include a scene where Kamara and this maniac are locked in a room together? I'm not sure at this point how to get there, but It'd be a betrayal of drama to avoid it.)

Anyway, while I don't feel I've answered the question -- Where do we go from here? -- here's a tool we could potentially use. What say you, Burley?