Good morning everyone. It is time for our daily task as we take an idea from simple idea all the way from thinking about it, to writing and eventually completion. Yesterday we looked at the first sentence in our five sentence break out. Before we start, I want you to go back to the five sentences and look them over, see if they need to be adjusted any. As always, we will wait.
Today’s hold music is Beheaded by The Offspring. Probably not appropriate hold music but, it is for some strange reason what I woke up with stuck in my head, should you wish to sing along.
Everyone finished looking over their five sentences? Excellent. It should come as no surprise that today’s task involves the second sentence in our five sentence break down.
I know, everyone practice your shocked faces, pearl clasping and overly dramatic gasps.
In the first sentence we added five points about our main character, getting to know them a little bit better. The second sentence is where they are when your story starts.
And so…
The task for the day is to list five points that brought your protagonist to this point. A few of these items may have been touched upon in your five points for your character. Overlap is fine, but try to think beyond just the basics you listed previously. Dig just a little bit deeper. Your character may think that they are where they is due to one bad decision (at least in the beginning, that may change as they change throughout the story).
But you are not your character.
You know better.
You know that even if one bad decision or bad day or cataclysmic event causes whatever comes after, it took a few things to reach this point, even a reason why they made that bad decision or were standing in that exact spot at that exact moment in the first place.
So take a deep breath, look at the sentence that tells us where your character is at the start of the story and write down five points that occurred prior to lead them to this point.
We are going to continue with Bob in our example.
Example
Bob’s sentence two and where he is at the start of the story: Bob hates working for his father-in-law.
How did Bob get here?
1-Bob knew his father-in-law didn’t like him and so he tried to be nice to him in order to maintain the family peace.
2-At the time Henry (father-in-law) has his heart attack, Bob had graduated, but not yet accepted a position in his field, so agreed to help out temporarily at the family business because no one else was available.
3- Bob realized the business was in a much worse state than anyone let on and thought if it went down while he was there he would be blamed, permanently being the hated one who let the family business fail, so he worked to get them back to a stable point learning new skills and working hard.
4-After the heart attack Henry could only come in part time, so Bob did the bulk of the work and thought if he left it would send Henry back to the hospital and as much as he didn’t like Henry, didn’t want to be the reason he died.
5-His wife’s younger brothers and cousins start working for the business and Henry fully retires, but the others don’t want to do the work to run it. He is hoping to train one of them so he can step away permanently but thus far they resist taking any responsibility.
And there we have our five basic points that led Bob to be working for his father-in-law at a job he hates. Are there more details to add? Of course. And even though it is an example I am itching to add them. A little detail about how Henry, even though retired, still watches closely. How the other family members take credit for things but let Bob do the work. And I’m sure if I sat down and thought about it more there would be a few other bits added. If this was the story I was working on, I would jot them in my handy notebook and keep them in mind as we go through the rest of the story. Perhaps they will fit better in other places, perhaps I would circle back to add them here. Thee is still a lot of fluidity to the tale. But for now Task four is complete. My task four will be up shortly and I will see you back here tomorrow for our next task. Happy writing.
Ten til Midnight 