Wednesday, June 29, 2005

FILLER NOT ALLOWED

AB H M T X Z

CDEFG IJKL NOPQRS UVW Y

I write nearly 26 chapters per book. If I assign a letter of the alphabet to each chapter, the first line above is a pretty good picture of what I know about the story thus far. (That is, it WOULD be if I could figure out how to make the gaps appear and if I weren't on my way out to dinner.)

Now, take a look at the second line.

Pretty daunting, huh?

And, when you figure each chapter contains roughly three scenes, EACH of which has to be CRITICAL to the story and FORWARD MOVING (not to mention scathingly brilliant)...well, all I have to say is, YIKES.

1 comment:

John said...

Randy,

What are you doing? It appears you are making it really hard on yourself by analyzing chapter requirements. Did you really write chapters 1 and 2, then skip to chapter 8, then 13, then 20, 24, and 26, writing the ending? It certainly seems an interesting way of writing. If nothing else, when you feel so moved and know what is happening throughout the story, you can write whatever scene you want to.