I am a slacker.
      I have been slacking.
      Yet – I have more progress to update.
      I’m nearly done with step three. Now, three out of ten does not seem like much, but I have to tell you – in composing the paragraphs spelling out Act One, Two & Three so very much changed about the way I thought the story went.
      You see, since the original conception of the characters and their world, I always saw Girl A as the “star”, the protagonist, the main character. One of the follow-up books will deal with her misanthropic half-breed child. I thought her strange, semi-tragic first love and her forbidden-yet-intense second love were largely the focus.
      Alas, I’ve come to realize that it is Girl B who (at least in the first book) is the primary protagonist. The story is about the world, sure, and this cataclysmic shift of an age, but when I boiled the elements down to distill essences of plot from my big, jumbled conception it turns out she was the protagonist. It is her story.
      Weird.
      Anyway – that derailed my original stuff and so I’ve been reconsidering a lot more than I had intended and taking my time with Step 2 – which is just an overview of the main characters and the motivations/goals/reasons. I’ve contemplated the main antagonist and found much better reasons for his actions lurking in his background (which is good, since I’ve evolved a lot as a person and a writer since the first few go-arounds with this story). I’ve figured out a lot more about the original of Girl A and Girl B and some quirks about their world that I hadn’t considered before and am now loving.
      So yeah – progress is being made slowly but surely. To be fair, I am writing this update a few days ahead of time because I like to be sure the blog will update automatically in case I get busy/forget, however I imagine I’ll be done with three tonight and on to four and five.
      Step 3 calls for an overview of each of the main characters. Then Step 4 will be the one-page synopsis write-up. It is a piece that gives you a chance to flesh out the paragraph from Step 2 and flesh out the story in more detail. I don’t know if I can even cram all my junk onto one page, but the author mentions that it should be approximately 500 words and so… I’ll do my best.
      Then Step 5, which will harken back to the characters and ask me to create a synopsis for each of them. Write-up about half-a-page to a whole page (250 – 500 words) of text about their backstory and plot contributions. Much like the way we expanded our 5 sentences from Step 2 into our synopsis of Step 4, we turn our bits of information & insight from Step 3 into synopses in Step 5.
      But that’s enough of an update for now. Plugging along. Hopefully tonight (the night I’m writing from, which will be the past by the time you read this) will be a slow on at work so I can get some real progress made.
      Until next time!

Note: Image is “TSFM” by (me)/i>