Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Workshop Summary to Lesson 8

Workshop Summary

The following is a summary of where the journey brought us in the Exploratory Writing Workshop up to Lesson 8.

The first three vignettes had to do with Character Development. It is a three stage process you can use with virtually any major character in your book. It happens, as a sort of side benefit that you can also use the three vignettes, that go into birthing your Central Character (POV Character) as the basis for your first three chapters. Keep in mind that a vignette is like a sketch that a writer uses just like a fine arts painter uses in preparing for a canvas or a mural. So there are really two types of vignettes (sketches) To continue the analogy with the painter, one type is like a portrait sketch and the other type is a vista sketch. The first three vignettes were portrait sketches of your Central Character acting under different circumstances... placid waters, sucked into the current and swept over the falls into a Life Changing event. In writing them you could have had some inkling of plot but none was really required. When you use the model on other Major Characters the same holds true. Only the slightest glimmer of plot or no glimmer at all is necessary. Plot or story line really begins after chapter 3. These vignettes are not completed portraits but "Sketches." When you come back after the outline is completed they will need to be fleshed out. This is because in the fuller context of the outline they will evolve and change.

This brings us to the last three vignettes. These are vista vignettes and are place holders you plunk down in the middle of each of the phases. They are rough sketches in the true sense of the word. These vignettes are an anchor in the middle of the gulf between a string of empty chapters. You don't even know yet what these chapters will hold. All you know for sure is that the vignette will reach from the middle of the Phase, on one hand and stretch forward on the other. So what will the Phase contain, you ask. The answer is a serious crisis... but it's more than that. This is where the Operational Hat comes in. You know three things for sure. The vignette will be somewhere in the middle, there will be unwritten chapters before and after it, and the sublayers will be on either side with the main thread layer running throughout the length.

OK! you tell me.. "Got It" but you wonder where exactly will this anchor vignette plunk down? This is a bit fuzzy for me to answer but I'll hazard a guess since I asked the question. In any phase the action starts small and begins to rise...there is a crisis looming, and maybe some conflict swirling about. At the point where the CC has a clear idea of what he/she is facing is where the vista (Plot) vignette needs to begin. In the unwritten chapters proceeding it is a bit of layering, stuff that moves the main thread of the story along and suddenly you see it. OMG! The CC realizes what he/she is up against... The full scope of what is opposing him/her becomes crystal clear. This is what you sketch for this vignette. It stands in the center of what happened earlier in the phase and what is going to happen in the chapters that complete the phase. It is not the whole shebang, it is not a hundred pounds of mackerel in a 5 gallon pail... it is a consequence of what came before, the OMG realization and a foreshadowing of what must happen in the last three chapters of the phase to surmount the obstacle.