Okay. One of the things I struggle with is maintaining focus. To me, I am focusing on  my characters and what they are experiencing. I want to develop each thing happening to its fullest and richest extent. Where’s the problem with this? Genre definitions. Percentages. Etc. If it’s a romance, every single detail must focus on getting the h/h together, right? It’s not a rule and quite a few authors send their focus elsewhere. That’s what urban fantasy is for, right? It lets you focus on the plot as much as the romance without the plot having to be designed to get two people together. Or something like that.

I begin to feel tied down and like my field view is narrowed when I am told to focus. But a story is better for it when it all ties together, right? So, John Truby has his premise and his designing principle and his single story spine and to me they are all three the same thing. One sentence telling what your story is about.

He says there are differences, but I keep getting lost. Now if you thought this would be a blog about me telling you how to do craft, it isn’t. I am a published writer, considered an expert in my field at times. But like all writers everywhere, I am really an eternal student. There is always more to learn. More to research.

So, I am thinking out loud here and would love input.

Using Buffy, because Joss is just that damn good, lets give this a try.

Premise: A superficial young girl is gifted with the supernatural power to fight evil and save the world while growing up.

Now, I’ve heard the growing up part in interviews, extras and what not. The whole series is about Buffy growing up and suffering the pangs of teen to adulthood amidst all the supernatural stuff. So maybe that premise is actually the designing principle?

Premise: A young girl becomes a slayer and is forced to grow up.

Designing Principle = Weakness (phychological and moral) X Basic Action

= a superficial young girl who wants to be normal is gifted with the strength and skill to fight evil and save the world, no matter what it costs her.

Hmm. I kind of like that because it’s all those costs that force her to grow up. Now, in one line, what is the single story spine? The one thing every episode but one really focuses on. (That one being the Xander-centric eppi in Season 3, The Zeppo, which even that focused a bit on Buffy by showing what those around her go through and how they feel being on the edge of her grand drama.)

Now each season had a character arc, and so did each episode, and they each had a single story spine.  Buffy enters a new school and makes new friends but being a slayer follows her even to Sunnydale and she has to balance friends, family, school and evil all over again. That would be Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest.

So would the whole series single spine be: Buffy the Vampire Slayer struggles to balance love, family, life and evil.

Now, how are these three different?

P: A young girl becomes a slayer and is forced to grow up.

DP: a superficial young girl who wants to be normal is gifted with the strength and skill to fight evil and save the world, no matter what it costs her.

SSS: Buffy the Vampire Slayer struggles to balance love, family, life and evil.

What do you think?

Okay, so when I am working on a story and I need time to think and mull over a story without feeling unproductive, I turn to my craft books. I love all the old stand-bys. Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain, Donald Maass and his Writing the Breakout Novel and accompanying workbook. One I discovered last year in my constant search of the bookshelves at Borders was The Anatomy of Story by John Truby.

Storytelling is story telling whether it’s for a novel, a movie or a TV show. Some things just translate across all the barriers. So, though he writes for screenwriters and uses movies as examples, like many writing books, I love his “organic” style of considering a story and all its facets without it seeming so external.

What I really like is how his 22 steps of story telling fall in line with the 12 steps of the hero’s journey, only he puts more  emphasis on that one big section that so many people give one name to and leave it wide open. Step 6, Act II, Tests, Allies and Enemies, The Sagging Middle.

I once tried to get more insight from a poor author who tried her best to explain to me that’s where you apply all you’ve built on your characters and plot and play with it a bit and end up with a building tension to approaching your inmost cave. She tried. Very sincerely, she tried.

I like that TAS has a few more things to consider that works with the hero’s journey but is really more character based and has you considering theme, story world, setting, character webs and all that without it being a what’s next deal so you really work all around the story, considering every angle so when you write it, it comes  out richer.

Of course, I still have questions, but that’s for another day.

Wow, sometimes fatigue hits and it’s all I can do to get through the day. It really sucks when that day lasts a week or two. Such is life with FA.

I have managed to be productive for the most part. I pretty much did taxes. Just a few final touches. And, thanks to some really gifted people, I saved my files from the November hard drive death. Namely my NaNoWriMo book that hadn’t been backed up in two weeks of great progress. So, have I learned my lesson? You betcha. And I have one of those awesome 500 G external hard drives to make it easier. I just need to learn the sync software, which, luckily, software is rarely difficult for me.

In the meantime, I wrote a short story for The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2. I know, me, a vampire romance? I seriously doubted my ability to add something new to the sub-genre, but the resulting story is so awesome it fired all my engines.

So, I have a ghost story I’m considering making a YA. A gargoyle story I was playing with to keep writing daily, or that was the hope. A vampire romance I’d love to expand. And Damned. I feel at loose ends. I have a lot to think about.

It’s strange the way a writer’s mind works. At times, I’m not even sure if my mind works like a “normal” writer’s mind, or is that a stupid comparison? I know too many of us feel far from normal, is there even such an animal as a normal writer? Probably not.

Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to the idea of beginning a story and doing nothing but attending the page and writing forward. I have a super cool idea with a song for a “gong” that jumpstarts my imagination every time I hear it. AFI: Prelude 12/21. Ever since the Smallville episode that played that song for Lex Luthor, I have loved to play it over and over. It’s one of those too short songs.

So here I am writing and I have a few thousand words, then my mind blanks. And not even sitting with the Alphasmart, the laptop or a notebook got the words flowing. Neither did reading or napping or daydreaming as I listened to music. That’s when I realized that’s as far as this organic writer can go before trying to plan *something*. But I don’t plot normally, either.

This weekend, I pulled out the book that speaks most to me as a writer. The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. This is a book for organic writers. It’s not plug and play GMC or lists of scenes. Not at first, anyway. He begins with the designing principle.

I began studying this book last spring, using it in conjunction with Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain. I’ve read through both, highlighting and writing notes. This weekend, I came to a different understanding. Everything I’d studied flew out of my head and I need to go over it again. I think one of the best ways for me to learn something is not hands on or just seeing it in writing. It’s if I explain it. So, I believe, starting at the beginning, I need to explain it to someone.

Again, I am slow and consistency kicks my butt every time. Thus the issue with NaNoWriMo. But stay tuned.  I think I’ll make a page for the study of The Anatomy of Story on my website.

In the meantime, please join me at Heidi Betts’ WIPS and Chains blog:

http://www.heidibetts.com/wipsandchains/

Today, she’s interviewed me.

I am off to appear a few places around the internet. Such as:

My James Gang interview with Marcia James
http://www.marciajames.net/James_gang.html

My soon-to-be-announced WIPS and Chains interview with Heidi Betts
http://www.heidibetts.com/wipsandchains/

And, surprise!, I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo! Please stop by and visit the fun. All forms of encouragement needed and very, very welcome.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/424392

In the meantime, I have a special treat for you. In the last three months, I have read Trouble, Wicked and My Perogative by Sasha White and absolutely loved them. The character growth is sensational. Today I get to ask Sasha a few questions about her books. Everyone, please welcome Sasha White from www.sashawhite.net.

Sasha: Hi Jamie, Thanks so much inviting me to be here.

Jamie: I’d gladly have you visit any time.  The part of your books that stands out most to me is that your heroines are on the verge of big changes, mentally and emotionally. How do you approach that when you begin a book? Do you plan every stage of change, or does it happen in the course of the writing?

Sasha: I’d love to say I plan it, but really, I don’t. I tend to start with getting to know a character-thier job, their their desires, their pet peeves- and just go with it.  When I start I usually have an idea of the story’s tone and direction-sexually speaking. As in what that main character likes, wants, or desires - but the rest I tend to just go with. I’m blessed to have editors who trust me to come through with a great story so they let me skim by with pretty skimpy synopsis.

Jamie: That’s definitely a blessing. I hear readers don’t always like your characters…how do you feel about that?

Sasha: I always like my characters, but there are times when they do things I think readers won’t always like. And I understand that. But for me, I think they have to do what they have to do to remain true to them, and those things might make some people uncomfortable. In my mind strange things happen when a character is growing and changing.

With Kelsey I knew some readers wouldn’t ‘get’ her needs, her appetite for rough sex, or her for plenty of sex, but it was part of HER. I just hoped that if readers take the time to read the story thoroughly, they’ll see WHY she does the things she does…and so far, it seems readers have gotten it. I love that I can push my characters, make them real in every way, even to the point that some say they wanted to slap Kelsey upside the head, and honestly, I like that -it means the reader has become invested in the character and the story.

Jamie: I enjoyed her wildness. I wasn’t attracted to the story because of it, almost the opposite, but once I could understand who she was as a person, I could identify with her. She became three dimensional and that really kept me reading. What was the hardest part about writing My Prerogative? Why? How did you get past it?

Sasha: Honestly, with My Prerogative I think the hardest part was not putting too much of myself into Kelsey. We have a lot in common, both bartenders in nightclubs into their 30’s, both single, both unwilling to settle to be with someone who isn’t “the one”.  I put bits of myself in all my characters, but with Kelsey, it was hard not to turn it into a memoir or journal. But, Kelsey is not me, even though we share some experiences and some desires… maybe some day I will write a memoir…under a different name. LOL

Jamie: LOL I’d read it. I think it’s difficult to not put a bit of ourselves into our characters. What is your favorite thing about writing erotic romance?

Sasha: Showing that real people have secret desires and dreams that they can live out if they only go after them. I think that going after what you want is a theme in all of my stories. With erotic romance and erotica, what my characters want is often to fulfill a desire, secret or otherwise.

Jamie: Good point. What is your least favorite?

Sasha: The misconception that the sex in the stories has to be extreme, kinky, or overwhelming to be erotic.  I find it discouraging that people have gotten to the point that they’ll read a non-kinky sex scene and think it’s non-erotic.

Jamie: I agree. What is your next release?

Sasha: My next release is on November 28th, PRIMAL MALE, the sequel to last years SEXY DEVIL which is my own paranomal mini-series. The hero, Drake Wheeler, is an empath who has basically shut down his own emotions as a defense against his gift. He feels too much, so his defense mechanism is to shut down his own emotions. Of course, it doesn’t help that he went into the military when he was only 18, and became a top notch sniper. He’s a man who feels too much and has shut down in order to do his job, and help protect people from the the evils of the world.  The heroine is a shape-shifter he thinks can help a girl he thinks of a little sister.  There’s more to it than that of course, and you can see a peek of it on my Website Bookshelf. Just go to the Coming Soon page.

Jamie: Oh, wow. Sounds like I have more books to add to my TBR pile. I can’t wait. What are you writing now?

Sasha: I’m not really writing anything right now. Well, okay, I have a couple of ideas I’m playing with, but I’ve not settled on a specific one yet. When I do, I’ll let you know. *grin*

Please do. Thank you, Sasha, for visiting with me. Good luck on  the release of Primal Male. And with choosing a new project.

Everyone, please stop by for a chat in the comments and one lucky winner will win a special prize from Sasha White! Make sure you leave your email address so you can be contacted.