Happy June!! I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the promise of summer. ☀️ What I’m looking forward to the most when the kiddos are done with school is NO MORNING ALARMS. And pool days. Maybe some beach days, if we’re lucky. Bring it on.
But I’m also looking forward to a bit more of a relaxed routine that gives me more time to write since I’ve been doing all this prep work for this novel! When I sat down to do this assignment, I realized I had no clue—none—of what really happens in the middle. I’ve written the beginning and an “aha” moment that goes near the end, but most of what happens between the two is a little fuzzy in my head. The Story Genius chapter I read this month (chapter 12, if you’re counting) had me pulling out plot points and brainstorming all kinds of potential conflicts I’m itching to explore.
The title of this chapter is “Going Back to Move Forward: How to Harvest the Past to Set Up the Plot,” and one of the things I appreciate so much about this process is the constant reminder to not let the plot run away with the story. It’s easy (ish) to come up with all kinds of plot twists and shenanigans, but if they don’t connect with that backstory, that third rail, it’s meaningless, and there’s every chance that you’ll write yourself into a corner. “It’s the constant laser beam focus on your protagonist’s story-specific inner struggle that will keep you from allowing surface storylines to hijack the story you’re telling” (p.197).
This, I think, will be the key, keeping that inner struggle front and center whenever I start to flesh out any particular scene. I might even put it on a sticky note where I can see it. But before I get to any of that, the first assignment was to write down “a brief overview of your novel as you see it right now,” sort of like a back cover copy.
Not gonna lie—this was a challenge since, as I mentioned, the middle was kind of fuzzy. But wouldn’t you know, the more I looked over everything I’d already written, the more certain things came into focus.
I started with a bullet point list of vague things in my “idea list” folder, just to set some lanterns down the path, which helped to spawn ideas and questions. When I started writing the overview, things began to gel:
In Quinn’s high-society world, bloodline is everything, so when her future mother-in-law wants to add her DNA sample to their family’s ancestry project, not knowing that Quinn was adopted, Quinn has to face her fear of finding out what that DNA will say about her before her in-laws do. Although the PI she hires uncovers the fact that her birth mother, Delilah, had been 17 and apparently died soon after giving her up for adoption, that’s still only half of the story. With no other choice, she contacts her only known relative at this point, Delilah’s sister, and is invited to visit.
She’s unprepared for the overwhelming welcome that Aunt Dixie goes out of her way to give her, but she soon starts to feel almost at home in the small Georgia town. Dixie enthusiastically shares everything she knows and everything that’s left of her younger sister, and Quinn is thrilled when she and Dixie are able to finally trace that family line back to the American Revolution. She can go back to Boston, get married, proudly join the family in her own right, and keep her position in the DAR.
But as she continues to get to know the people who loved Delilah, there are still two things that don’t feel right: nobody seems to have any clue who her father was, and it was presumed that Delilah took her own life because a note was found—but where is her body? Something tells her that the answer to one will explain the other, but it’s becoming more obvious that somebody wants those answers to stay hidden. When she learns what the truth will cost her, she’ll have to decide which she wants more, the bloodline or the family.
I think it’s a decent start, with the caveat that it’s nowhere near final. But I am starting to get excited that I can see the lights down the story trail. Next up, we’ll get to some scene cards!
Don’t forget to find time to read a good book, write some words, smile in the sunshine, and hug your people. 📖 📝 😎 💕
Tip of the Month
For those of you who can tech-it all the way, setting up a digital notebook is a great way to keep your thoughts, story ideas, plot lines, characters, and research all in one place! Especially if you use a cloud-based something like Evernote or even Google Docs, you’ll have it accessible wherever you go.
Read Any Good Books Lately?
Every once in a while, I stumble into an absolute jewel like The Binding by Bridget Collins. I was so intrigued by the description, and when I finished it, I felt like I had just witnessed a master class in storytelling.
From Goodreads:
Imagine you could erase grief.
Imagine you could remove pain.
Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret.
Forever.Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst their small community, but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.
For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there’s something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under his mentor’s workshop rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored.
But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends—and just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.
An unforgettable novel of enchantment, mystery, memory, and forbidden love, The Binding is a beautiful homage to the allure and life-changing power of books—and a reminder to us all that knowledge can be its own kind of magic.
Did You Know?
Do you know why tock-tick, flop-flip, and mash-mish sound weird to us? It’s a rule we have in English called “ablaut reduplication.” When we have these combinations that differ only in the vowels, it is usually the “i” or “e” that comes first, followed by “a”, then “o” (like in tic-tac-toe). This is because we follow a process of front-to-back vowels—both i and e are formed with the tongue pushing more toward the front of the mouth, and the tongue moves back to produce a and o. Try it!
And Finally …
You know where I’ll be if you need me. 🌴😎🌴