Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Cranking Along

Cranking Along

As I mentioned, Phase 1 in writing the Novella, Don Ricardo de Castillo was getting my characters to talking and winding up with a story line. Phase 2 or the second edit required two things. First was writing the Outline of the story line I now knew and second integrating the research.

For the research I had my two Dummie books and a pretty good period reference in Raphael Sabatini’s book Torquemada. Sabatini is also one of my favorite Romance novel writers….that he also wrote a scholarly epistyle on the Inquisition was an added benefit.

As I read Torquemada I had my laptop tuned on and if I thought a passage had application in my story I wrote it on the screen like a note card in an old term paper. When I finished with the research I had about six pages of notes. Then I took the Outline I created which listed the chapters and scenes. Going reference by reference I cut and pasted these into the outline. Finally taking the outline integrated with the research, I pasted in the original scene and prepared to rewrite. I intend to so this so on through each scene in the chapter and each chapter in the Novella.

Regarding the Dummie books, as I read them I extracted what I consider to be principles that I had not been aware of or applied to my first draft….I will try to integrate these into my second draft.

So far it's working and it remains to be seen how it is all going to turn out. If it doesn’t fly I want it to be a consequence of my story telling and writing skills rather than a deficiency in ability to follow the mandates of the genre.