Perseverance Structure

Today I begin the manuscript for my 5th or 7th novel, depending on how Wizard Clip Haunting is counted (1 or 3). I was calling this next effort Edith's Hope, as the third in a series of novels about courageous women who battle profane cultures  (#1 Tiger's Hope, #2 Sabriya's Hope), but I may rename it after the story's prominent theme—Perseverance since I've abandoned the "Hope" trilogy idea. Sabriya's Hope has been reissued as The Daughter They Stole: A Sabriya Kensington Thriller. Yes, that suggests a series. Will Sabriya wear a mask, a cape, and brandish a sword? (She hasn't told me.)

As I detailed in my last post about the "Nigerian" scam I fell for, the scam had a beneficial upside. It motivated me to create thorough character profiles for the main characters, and I completed a detailed plot diagram consisting of a sequence of 8 Story Diamonds, one for each of the 8 parts of the story.  

Here's an image of that plot, which defines each of the 72 chapters (in green rectangles). Turning points at act breaks (3 acts per part) are in purple, pinch points in dark blue, and disasters, which act as cliffhangers at the end of each part, are in red.

What's Perseverance about?  

At the beginning of the 18th century, a strong but timid Ohio farm girl with nascent feminist tendencies rejects America’s women’s suffrage movement as too political, too slow, and too regressive. Instead, Edith Jane Flesher chooses an adventure to British India as a Christian missionary to care for poor Dalit women whose husbands have abandoned them. Little does she know her idealism will be severely tested as her husband and toddler son are suddenly taken from her, and then her life and those of her young daughters are threatened with death, adultery, corruption, trafficking, and the defamation of character by a cabal of men she first trusted, leaving her only with perseverance.

The Character Profile MS Word document describes (together) Edith's character and story in a short-handed treatment of 18 pages, followed by 12 pages that describe each of the other 16 major characters.  The characters are also described psychographically.

The Nicomachean chart illustrates the moral transformation arc of the characters. Some arc toward the central virtue, others arc toward the vice extremes, and a few remain anchored and do not transform. 

The Myers-Briggs chart illustrates the fundamental learning and interacting personalities of the characters.

Finally, all of the above serve only as beginning guides. They are all sure to change as the manuscript developes.