Sabriya's Hope Writing Journal No. 15

 

Scenes/Beats for Final Battle of Sabriya's Hope

I'm finally there, at the granular level, not the structural or plot level, for the final chapter of Sabriya's Hope.

Although the online serialization of Sabriya's Hope is current at Chapter 22, it's only halfway through the novel. There are about 23 more chapters...depending on how I parse what is written. All of the chapters are written (or I should say drafted) except the Final Battle, which may stretch into 2 chapters. 

In the final battle (charted above), I need to resolve about 12 subplots; a few require only 1 beat to resolve. Of course, Sabriya's character's final resolution requires eight beats.  The challenge is how to do that efficiently so the reader can follow the action, much of which is simultaneous. 

My solution was to create one e-card for each beat of each of the 12 subplots on a Keynote slide. I DID NOT know what order the e-cards (and beats) should be in when I started, but as I created them, I placed them approximately in sequence from left (beginning) to right (end).

Then I had to sit back and try to envision the characters' entrances and exits, what happens to each, and move the cards around until I felt good about the action sequence as it would be explained in words. When I was done, I had 9 scenes (each bounded by a green box above).

Starting tomorrow (April 10, 2026), I will begin writing words and full sentences (not outlines). As I write, I'll decide which beats in each scene to describe first, second, etc., and then figure out the transition to the next scene. 

This will take several days, a lot of word-smithing, and many on-the-fly revisions. It may be 4,000+ words and need 2 chapters. Then I 'll let it sit for a day and come back and try to make the sentences more fluid, eliminating repetitive words, and working on ending sequences with emphatic (hooking) action. I will use One-Look Thesaurus extensively. 

"Sabriya's Hope" Writing Journal No. 14

I d rather write about writing than write. 

I'm well into Act 3 and tasting the end of the first draft.  The closer to the end of an action-oriented story, the more I need graphics for plots, timelines for flashbacks, and maps for geography to keep me organized...or perhaps I should say to keep my characters focused and locally organized. 

I'm pretty sure every writer does this to some extent, although I think I'm more dependent than many since I'm visually dependent, and without such linear aids, I don't know where or when things are supposed to be and happen. 

Here are a few of the aids I rely on, though I think I shared an early version of the plot chart.  All of these aids get revised as I write and change my mind, hopefully for good reason.

 Plot Chart. Green checkmarks and slashes show what's written. 

Excel timeline of major events, dates, and ages of characters.

Map of fictitious Pellagore, the capital Meijing, overlapping SE China, showing locations, tracks and travel timing.

The final battle takes place in the Mannu Clinic, an abandoned mini-hospital that sits next to a navigable canal connecting the traffickers to the South China Sea and their foreign clients. 

Deck Plan of the Ruskie Gold, 70-foot ocean trawler used to secretly ferry trafficked victims from Pellagore to foreign territories.

Sabriya's Hope Writing Journal 13

I wish I could be making movies instead of writing novels. But novels are possible, and movies are not, when there is little money. I have a thirst for visuals. When Pam and I watch movies at home, lately about three/week, she's all a tizzy about the emotional storyline, and I'm in awe of the art director's imagination, the blocking, and the L O N G one-take opening sequences (e.g. Touch of Evil).

Writing Sabriya was getting me down. I wanted to SEE my characters and the settings. But my imagination struggles to create art, although I don't have much trouble with wordy descriptions.  But then, I'm now Lew Wallace (Ben Hur), whose command of English and scene setting is mesmerizing. 

I don't use AI to write. I want what I create to be my creation, although research and synonym finders I can't do without. But AI has helped me test my descriptions. I started out with Microsoft Copilot (because we have a Microsoft Office subscription).

But after I write a scene, I'm always wondering how it will translate visually in the reader's mind...or on screen if I should be so lucky. Copilot and lately ChatGPT have made writing a bit more fun for my right brain. Here are some examples where I've taken my word description and asked one or the other AI system what it would look like, though I am humble enough to realize the AI rendering is more Lew Wallace than me. 

Sabriya discovers a safe haven:
St. Mary Elias Monastery

Miwi Cun village where Sabriya's
secret daughter was raised

Sabriya races through the night on her
 MI6 stealth cycle

Doffing her Carmelite lay habit for a
true wedding dress

Sapptoso watches Sabriya give a speech
 as he plans her demise

Sabriya and Hannah, her security attache,
 discuss royal protocol

Sabriya asks David for forgiveness

Sabriya Writing Journal 12 - Aids: Keynote, Scapple, and Scrivener

Sabriya's Hope Plot Board

Writing Aids for writers are numerous. Here are some suggestions and a few visuals. 

A frequent contributor to The Moral Premise knowledge base, Miquel Banks, recently recommended Literature and Latte's SCAPPLE as a useful writer's aid for outlining, brainstorming, plotting, and visualizing how the many ideas that undergird a novel or screenplay can be organized.  Miquel knows I already use Literature and Latte's SCRIVENER for early drafts, such as my novel Sabriya's Hope, which is nearing completion, and is being serialized weekly online.

Sabriya's Hope Names, Locations, etc.

Scapple is a powerful tool, and it integrates well with Scrivener, as you might expect coming from the same company. I have written about my use of Scrivener in other posts on this blog, and while I don't like everything about it (it has some odd British intuitions), it does have many tools that are invaluable and, I doubt, are available elsewhere. 

Sabriya's Hope Character Visuals (AI)

While Scapple is powerful and easy to use, I chose to stick with Apple's Keynote because of my deep familiarity with it when creating slide presentations for my live workshops, which use hundreds of graphics to illustrate narrative theory and story structure. For some tasks, like right-side brainstorming, Scapple is excellent. But I'm mostly a left-sided thinker and so linear processes and procedures are easier for me...thus Keynote is an easy fit.

Sabriya's Hope Maps of Travel and Chases

I think Scapple can do everything I do in Keynote,  as illustrated in the slides at right (clickable to enlarge), but again, it's simply my long use and deep familiarity with Keynote that allows me to keep my focus on completing a novel or screenplay, instead of spending time learning a new system. Elements in the slides on the right were created with a combination of tools from Keynote, Photoshop, Google Maps, and AI from Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT/Open AI. (I have modest subscriptions to Microsoft Office and ChatGPT/Open AI.)

SABRIYA Writing Journal 9 - Capturing and Engaging Your Reader

In September and October (2025), I made several presentations to writing conferences in Florida, West Virginia, Michigan and on-line on How to Capture and Engage your Audience (or Readers). There were seven basic methods I outlined in the presentation. You can view and download the PDF of that talk HERE. It's a large file, be patient for the download. 

Staying within that theme, below are 22 more ideas from my analysis of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, which I have just finished, although I am far from finished with it.

The 1874 novel is reportedly 136,000 words and should, I have read, take only 6-7 hours to read (377 wpm). The 136,000, however, does not include the hundreds of footnotes, or my putting the book down to look up Hardy's many literary and cultural references, nor does it count the times I had to re-read sentences and paragraphs to get the gist of 150-year-old, 19th-century language to understand. Thus, it took me the most of six days. Add to that my wife's requirement that I read aloud to her the final two chapters, since we had both screened the 1967 and 2015 movies (there are five movies and multiple stage plays based on the novel).

While Madding Crowd was enjoyable for me, I suspect it was for reasons that differed from other's. For me, it was research that involved a lot of highlighting and note-taking. I wanted to be a better writer, and over the last six months, in preparation to dig into the Sabriya manuscript, Madding Crowd ended up being the most noteworthy of the six novels I read. Below, I share what I have learned, or been reminded of, from Madding Crowd. 

I had purchased and extensively highlighted the Penguin Classics paperback edition (first published 2000, reprinted 2003) of Madding Crowd. The novel was so popular, even in Hardy's day, that it was released in various volumes and series, and revised by Hardy (in 1895, and 1901) and others, and found readers not only in England, but the U.S.  My copy includes an editor's preface, a chronology of Hardy's life, biographical notes, an introduction, and many, many footnotes comparing various editions to one another and explaining references to Biblical and other classical texts that Hardy mentions in the story. There is also a glossary so modern readers can better connect with the culture of Wessex, England in the late 19th century. 

Because of my fascination with the history of Western Civilization, I suppose, the book had extra appeal. But as a writer, setting off on his 4th novel, and 9th book, after hundreds of documentary films and videos and as many screenplays on which I've consulted or written, I knew I still had much to learn.

Yet, I am still haunted, even amidst the notes below. Sabriya is supposed to be a contemporary action-thriller, and Madding Crowd is a historical romance. Thus, what I think I may have learned may not be learning enough, or learning in the wrong direction. 

Nonetheless:

• BE THE OMNISCIENT WRITER: Write as the omniscient writer (not omniscient God). "Little did he know that..." and "Bathsheba, however, had other ideas..."

• CHARACTER POV. Stick to a single character's POV in a scene, with occasional flourishes as the omniscient writer, perhaps at the end of the scene. Hardy doesn't do this, and when he shifts POV, it always takes me out of the story to get into another character's head.

• USE SCENE-SEQUENCE. Write paragraphs in the Scene-Sequel paradigm to employ an emotional-rational roller coaster at the paragraph level.

• SCENE DESCRIPTIONS. Start scenes with a detailed description of the setting, including weather, harvest, animals, landscape, season, birds, prey, and flowers in such a way as to parallel the coming action, attitudes, or foreshadow the tragedy afoot.

• PLOT AHEAD-OF-TIME PLOT REVERSALS. Plot regular hard reversals of the plot (turning points). Do not neglect (that is, consider using) asymmetrical reversals within the protagonist or antagonist's mind apart from the physical plot. That is, a reversal that does not need to be physical, it can be only psychological. E.g. "...considering the rum creatures we women are." (Liddy to Bathsheba) ["Rum" in the feminine old British context means "strange" or "odd."]

• APHORISM FACTORY: Aphorisms are Hardy's superpower. Try for at least one aphorism per page (omniscient writer POV), a pithy saying of truth that reverses the use of nouns and verbs.  E.g.  "The passion now startled him less even when it tortured him more." and "We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by." And, "He was drenched, weary, and sad, but not so sad as drenched and weary, for he was cheered by a sense of success in a good cause." (Oak after covering the ricks before a wind storm.)

• WRITE IRONIC: ...descriptions of all characters (make them round, not flat), e.g. "Her emblazoned fault was to be too pronounced in her objections, and not sufficiently overt in her likings." [Actually, that's an aphorism; the irony comes in the detail of what that aphorism summarizes. 

• UNREQUITED ROMANCES: Build in multiple fierce but unrequited romances (love triangles or quadrangles). One may be noble and true (Oak), one persistent and mad (Boldwood), one manipulative and lustful (Troy). 

• HOUSE OF CARDS: The relationships between key characters must be interdependent like a house of cards. This creates tension; if one fails to create suspense, the others fail to be necessary. (hey, that's an aphorism.) 

• REASON WITH GAPS: Make speeches and character motivations rational, but also (omnisciently) point out gaps in reasoning. 

• WOMAN'S INDECISION: Much of Hardy's drama in Madding Crowd centers on a woman's indecision (due to a sense of misplaced and exaggerated obligation or guilt) and a man's deceitfulness (due to achieving the goal at all costs, even to oneself). This creates massive psychological upheaval of values and thus poor decisions and actions that result in natural consequences.) Bathsheba to Liddy: "I feel wretched at one time, and buoyant at another." Women (typically or in general) tend to be global thinkers, and are affected by their significant monthly hormonal cycle. This "indecision" (due to conflicting priorities) is one reason why romance novels, with women as protagonists, are best sellers, and where the plot can be summarized as "I don't know what to do." Women buy such novels because they easily identify with the characters and their predicaments.

• LET NATURE REVERSE: Don't neglect reversals induced by nature (Fire, Floods, Storms, Earthquakes). Always foreshadow such reversals and describe how nature (animal instincts) predicts them. Such are never elements of "deus ex machina." Such can be handled as secrets that only nature knows, e.g. foreshadowed by the omniscient writer.  As in all turning points and reversals, draw them out, detail, chronology, give them an inevitability, never let the reader imagine the reversal "just happened."  (e.g., the long queue of the windstorm and thatching of the wheat and barley ricks.

• TAKE TIME TO REVERSE. Never describe a turning point quickly. Dwell on the detail, stretch it out, make it essential. One of my favorites is in Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger , when a smart bomb is dropped on a drug cartel meeting in Colombia. Clancy takes pages to describe the setup and the seconds it takes for the bomb to be targeted, launched, armed, dropped, and explode. 

• NATURE'S OMNISCIENCE: Let Nature describe God's or Satan's (the supernatural) attitude about the scene. e.g. Fanny's grave, (ennobled by Troy as an act of penance) is destroyed by rainwater from a gargoyle's mouth.

• INTEGRITY RISES FROM ASHES: In the midst of moral failure, let integrity arise, although too little too late. e.g. Bathsheba honors Fanny's grave, Boldwood negotiates with Troy for Troy to marry Bathsheba, Bathsheba runs after Oak after dismissing him (multiple times), Boldwood turns himself into the gaol (jail), Oak marries Bathsheba on the last page...but why not even a kiss?) 

• INDEFINITE NOUNS: Use omniscient observer pronouns as a unique reference with different emotional connotations: E.g. in reference to Fanny: dead fellow creature, our sister, member of the flock of Christ, unconscious truant, the body.

• DELAYED REVEAL:  Before revealing the pivotal action, exhaust the inner monologue of dilemma with all possible actions and consequences and leave doubt about what the character will do. Reference the Scene-Sequence model. Consider if it requires a flash forward.

• GAP FILLING: Make the audience work. Try not to reveal a key element of the action, but describe around it. E.g. We never read how Bathsheba opens up Fanny's casket. We read that Bathsheba was determined to look inside, we read she searched for a tool, we read what she saw (although it was censored in one edition), but we never read how she pried open the box. This forces the reader to be intellectually engaged.

• ACTIONS NEED NOT BE ONE OR DECISIVE: ...but two or several and not decisive. In this technique, the earlier actions decided upon are abdicated in the process of taking the action (for reasons announced) until falling upon the final action taken. E.g., Bathsheba decides to go down one road, but retreats, and then goes down a second path, but retreats, and finally goes down a third. 

• FLASH FORWARDS: This is partially covered above. The Flash Forward without preamble can confuse the reader, for it will appear (should appear) out of order. But a subsequent paragraph can explain why. That is, present the action first (when dramatically appropriate) and then FLASHBACK to explain in detail, even recounting the inner monologue that brought the action to fruition.  However, there should be an emphatic surprise at the end of the Flashback to reward the reader for retreating in time. 

• INDIRECT LANGUAGE: This is like subtext, although subtext is usually found in dialogue. Indirect is a technique that mimics real dialogue or description by avoiding the explicit and describing, instead, the emotion, the attitude, or the mood. This can be done with an explicit description of nature or the setting. E.g. a sad situation in a setting of fog and dampness...when Bathsheba discovers her husband, Troy's, infidelity, she is lost emotionally and retreats overnight to a swampy area. Liddy comes to console her, and Hardy describes Liddy's steps across a bog that Bathsheba believes will swallow Liddy up. Although Liddy's feet sink into the spongy bog, it supports her, and she reaches Bathsheba. The blog here perfectly resembles Bathsheba's doubts about her life and refusal to take the steps to recovery.

• NAMES MUST SHOULD SOMETHING. Gabriel Oak is like an oak tree and an archangel. His integrity, strength, and truth are always intact. Bathsheba Everdene is forever beautiful and tempting like King David's Bathsheba who is worth stealing and dying for.  Sgt. Francis (Frank) Troy is a Trojan Horse who is frank to a fault, militantly clever, and manipulative. Farmer William Boldwood, is the "strong-willed warrior" (William) who is bold and persistent to a fault, and mad.  Fanny Robin is free as a bird. Fanny is also a vulgar, old British slang for a loose woman, which Fanny becomes. 

BONUS POINT. The editor's note to Madding Crowd points out that the title is sarcasm. Despite Weatherbury village, where the story takes place, being hundreds of kilometers from the madding crowd of London, its problems are the same and not far away at all. 

SABRIYA Writing Journal 8 - The Real Drama is Mostly Invisible ... VALUES and Inner Monologues

I have finished plotting out Sabriya as an action thriller novel, if such a thing exists. (see pix below of Keynote plot outline.) The story is set in fictional countries and towns of Southeast Asia. I was scared off from making it in a historical setting since I know so little about Southeast Asia's history. But I wanted to write better. I'm still pleased with my writing in my previous three fictional outings (Wizard Clip Haunting, Wizard Clip Haunting JR-YA, and Tiger's Hope). However, I wanted to venture into a more classic genre with Sabriya, even though the genre is an action thriller, not unlike the movie TAKEN and its sequels, which was the inspiration for the original Sabriya movie treatment from which this novel originates. 

Plot Beat Board for Sabriya Novel. Writing has begun.
Planned: 37 chapters, 72K words

The VALUES and the mental DECISIONS we hold in our hearts are the instigators of our ACTIONS and the resulting Natural Law CONSEQUENCES.  Some of you may be familiar with the workshop slide that follows. It's a milestone to understanding how character values and actions transform. 

As I usually do before starting a major project, I research the subjects where my knowledge is lax. In the case of Sabriya, I want to become a better novelist, so I've been reading and studying the writing techniques of well-known authors in genres I admire. The last three I've read are pictured below.

At right, is Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd."

The ... UNLESS ... surrounded by ellipses in the title of this post refers to WORDS on a printed page. Words are visible, but in a classic novel such as those above, the words refer to what's invisible—the inner monologue of the moral dilemma facing a character.

All successful stories, if I can make an invisible assertion, is that stories (even movies) are really about what is happening inside a character's heart and mind. An oft-repeated adage in our industry is SHOW, DON'T TELL. But what is shown in a movie, e.g., the action on the screen is only a metaphor for what the story is REALLY about—the internal transformation of the characters.

What I've come to realize anew is that novels, as opposed to movies, have a superpower—they spend most of their time dealing with what the story is really about by staying (mostly) inside the character's head, dealing with and negotiating values and decisions—the inner monologue predominates in classic novels.  I write "classic" novels, because popular novels read more like movies and spend most of the words describing action. My novel, Wizard Clip Haunting, does that because it was modeled after the style of Len Follett's The Pillars of the Earth, which I pored over at least twice before writing Wizard. 

I am not capable of mimicking Thomas Hardy in Madding Crowd. But I can't help but idolize passages like the following:

FRTMC (2015) Carey Mulligan (Bathsheba Everdene)
and Michael Sheen (William Boldwood)
Multiple movie efforts. We've seen the 1967 and 2015 
versions (our favorite).

Boldwood was thus either hot or cold. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him: a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid it was never slow. He was always hit mortally, or he was missed. The shallows in the characters of ordinary men were sterile strands in his, but his depths were so profound as to be practically bottomless. (Some of these delicious words were omitted in the 1912 edition as noted in the footnotes of the Penguin Classic edition shown above.) [Chapter XVII, p.105]

The above paragraph is a (physical) plot-worthy necessity as it foreshadows Boldwood's actions that bring the novel to a bold and surprising climax (not herein spoiled). The paragraph also foreshadows Bathsheba's internal reaction that unfolds in a subsequent paragraph. Together, the two make the climactic ending sensible and complete.

Bathsheba was far from dreaming that the dark and silent shape upon which she had so carelessly thrown a seed was a hotbed of tropic intensity. Had she known Boldwood's moods her blame would have been fearful, and the stain upon her heart ineradicable. Moreover had she known her present power for good and evil over this man she would have trembled at her responsibility. Luckily for her present, unluckily for her future tranquility, her understanding had not yet told her what Boldwood was. Nobody knew entirely: for though it was possible to form guesses concerning his emotional capabilities from old flood-marks faintly visible, he had never been seen at the high tides which caused them. (Chapter XVII, p.106]

Yes, novels can do much more than movies when it comes to revealing the truth of a story, and not overemphasizing the metaphors.

Sabriya, an action thriller, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your tolerance for internal dialogue), will be more pulp fiction than classic novel.  I must be careful for what I pray for, but nonetheless, Lord, help me to write more like Hardy. 

 

SABRIYA Writing Journal 7 - Laughter, Reading, & Distractions

LAUGHTER

The laughter comes from my ever-changing mind about the working title of this book I hope to write. I got tired of trying to pronounce "Shenzhen," although it should be easy, and I like alliterations. Besides, Hong Kong is next door to Shenzhen, and yet I need a visually interesting but fictional place to avoid geographical faux pas descriptions. So, for the time being, the story takes place in and around Hong Chi's environs.

READING RESEARCH

One of the tasks I undertake before getting too far into creating a manuscript is to read inspiring literature, hopefully in the genre that I intend to write. But, in this case, I'm a novel behind. Right now, the book I'm enjoying and marking up is something I should have read before the novel I just finished, Tiger's Hope (see below the distraction). Tiger's Hope is a cautionary tale about a singer-songwriter's IVF mix-up, a few Catholic priests, and a prelate. SABRIYA, while there is a subtle Catholic motif to the story, is NOT about the church or its prelates. 

Shenzhen and Hong Kong at Night by Mike Leung (flickr)

Regardless, the idea is to read an author that I want to emulate. I hope to learn how to write better. I stumbled upon the prolific pile of 105 books written by Ralph McInerny (1929-2010), 52 of which were fiction. A little research suggested that "The Priest" (1873 ~160,000 words) may have been his best.  I'm only 102 pages into the 563, and so far, there's plenty to admire in McInerny's command of English. The Priest is about a young man who has just returned to Ohio to be a junior associate priest after three years in Rome earning his Doctorate of Sacred Theology degree. The conflicts he faces are rooted in the shadows of the Vatican II council, a controversy that persists today despite the council's sessions, held long ago between 1962 and 1965. 

Nonetheless, here are some juicy examples of language...pardon the lack of context. Similes, metaphors, color, and ironic juxtapositions.

"Trying sinning on the side of charity, Monsignor."

Arthur Rupp was a first drip followed by many more...

...his brows dancing suggestively...

"Someone's been taking notes on your forehead." 

Something happened to the embalmed line of Agnes's mouth, as if she were trying to pop the stitches and scream that she was still alive.

She turned abruptly, the movement causing her eyes to snap open. She might have been catching him in a lie.

Did he really think Rome [the Vatican] was the buzzing center of it all . . . its major industry was postage stamps.

A moral theologian had several dozen ways of being less than candid [i.e. lying]

His voice seemed to force its way through the bridge of his nose.

...the newer neighborhoods and eventually suburbs spread west, munching into the orchards as they go...

...eyes downcast, corners of the mouth drooping, a general promise of tears.

"...the Second Vatican Council is a vicious rumor launched by Newsweek and the National Catholic Reporter."

The row of brick residence halls might have been a squadron of sinking ships.

She peered at her watch, hidden in a fold of flesh.

She wrinkled her nose and knitted her brows, prepared for the worst.

She became a poet of the nuptial bed in public.

It (the confessional) was a setting for the enactment of sad scenes. 

Bev freed a pickle slice that had been embedded like a fossil in the hamburger bun.

...but no matter where he looked he saw the infinitely interesting landscape of himself.

He had bared his soul to her, such as it was, and now they were to cuddle and coo. She felt like throwing up."

The Priest is a great read. I'm reading scenes aloud to Pam, as she doubles over in laughter .... hopefully at McInerny's wit and not my reading. 

And now for the...

DISTRACTION NO. 1

I haven't been able to write due to the distractions.

The first box of my latest novel, Tiger's Hope, was scheduled to be delivered from the printer. I wanted to use AI for the first time to generate a short promo video. I had spent several hours reading about how to achieve consistent results for a character's face, but I was fearful of the real time and money it would require. In reality, it took me about 10 hours but only cost about $20 out of pocket. I used a combination of Whisk to transform my AI cover still art into a prompt, then used ChatGPT to generate a consistent character prompt, and then a series of scene prompts (using the same character description for Anna Marie's face. I then rendered the results in VEO3 (not known as Sonovid). There were five scenes, as seen below, but it took at least three times that many renderings to get the visuals and voices correct. 

I assembled the five scenes in Final Cut Pro and added some James Stonehouse music from our motion picture effort of the same story 10 years earlier.

In the end, the voice clarity was very inconsistent, so I asked my wife, Pam, to ADR all five scenes. After which I applied audio filtering and sound effects to get the final soundtrack.  Here's what it looks and sounds like. What do you think?

DISTRACTION NO. 2

But then the books arrived, after I announced their release. I was too impatient. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. The printer, in this case IngramSpark, forgot to refill the yellow ink tray.  I'm sure they will reprint for free, but... well, at least the red cover metaphors the blood letting that freaks out my protagonist. I guess I have a pile of free "early readers." 

Rejected cover (left)        Desired cover (right)

Onward and upward, as my first publisher, Michael Wiese, would say. Wanna buy the book? CLICK HERE.

SABRIYA Writing Journal 5: Starting to Write

So, I started writing. Not so fast, Stan.

You may note in the poster to the right that the picture of Sabriya has changed, and "Shanghai" has changed to "Shenzhen." More about that later.

The first scene of the first chapter (target 1,000 words) is supposed to set the tone and location of the story in an omniscient voice. According to Journal Entry 4, Step A, I had long pre-visualized the setting. So, I stepped to B. and began the "objective or universal POV" of the location and tone.  This is what I came up with.

It was a wild boar snort before midnight, June 1995, when thirty-three thousand taxis and motorcycles jammed the streets, freeways, and ferries of Hong Chi. The colorful conveyances shuttled high-maintenance women from the crowded luxury shops of Chao and responsible men from the financial district back to their plastic kitchens and bamboo bedrooms in the banyan-festooned foothills. Meanwhile, young couples, apparently without responsibilities and dressed similarly, flocked to the club district and its frolicking nightlife, and male tourists, who had long ago shed their responsibilities, trooped to Qui Plaza’s red-light district where strumpets displayed their available assets for rent. Along the densely populated late-night streets, wet and muggy from a late-afternoon squall, the intoxicating mix of diesel exhaust and steam from food stalls hawking exotic stir-fries, kabobs, and crepes anesthetized the masses in their search for meaning.

EXCEPT,  I had put off committing to a specific (historic) place. I really didn't want to get tangled up in writing another lengthy historical novel, because getting the history right is always challenging.  "Hong Chi" sounded generic enough, and not like Bangkok or Hong Kong, where I'd face the historical challenges of also including the local political reality that always seemed in flux. But I faced a dilemma. I didn't want the story to be so generic that the culture could not be clearly identified. The story is about human trafficking, so I stopped writing 500 words into the 1,000, and started to read (again) about human trafficking and organ harvesting in SE Asia. It became apparent that China was at the top of the list, not just because of independent gangs, but because in the far north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang, there are reports of forced government organ harvesting of ethnic minorities.

Time and place are essential elements to nail down, so I've made a working choice. 1995. SHENZHEN.  Shenzhen is a large, colorful Chinese city adjacent to Hong Kong. Shenzhen is located in the historically famous province of Guangdong, formerly known as Canton, where the Opium Wars took place along the Pearl River. I have read (twice) the non-fiction biography Canton Captain about Merchant Captain Robert Bennet Forbes (1804–1889) (written by James B. Connolly). I was fascinated by the place and wanted that research effort to play into the Sabriya project. Another inadvertent piece of research is that we have a close acquaintance who lives in China, who has visited Shenzhen and worked for the UN on anti-human trafficking projects.

Finally, as a visual person, I knew that I would need to physically describe my characters early on in the manuscript, and that their ethnic background would play a role in those descriptions. This realization led me to make decisions that pushed my desire for a generic approach off the table. 

Here are the steps I've taken in the last few days.

MAP

I created a map and identified the location of all the major scenes in the treatment. Google Maps is very helpful here, especially since all the locations identified in the map below (yellow dots) have photo galleries accessible on Google Maps. So, I can see what the land and buildings look like as they have been photographed in the last few years. 

TIMELINE

Next, I had to nail down the historic events and ages of all the major characters in the story. The principal story takes place in 1995, before Hong Kong was handed over to the People's Republic of China (in 1997), marking the end of 156 years of British rule. For my story to work, the United Kingdom still needs clout in China.  I've created timelines like this successfully in the past using Excel. The image below shows an example of the Excel timeline for Sibriya's story. It lists the central characters and their ages corresponding to events in the plot beginning in 1979. The last row is 1995. I will add political and other events to this Excel file as needed. (Yes, there are multiple story events each year, here represented simply by the letters A through Q.)

CHARACTER BOARD

My character picture boards were created decades ago by cutting out images from magazines. Years ago, I used pictures from Google Images (often celebrities dressed up for a movie character). But this time around, I used Microsoft Pilot AI. Here's the result. The prompts for creating these images include the ethnicity and age of the individuals. Of course, once I made these images based on age and ethnicity, I had to update the poster. The previous Sabriya image looked too European to come from S.E Asia.

Let's see if I can now get back to writing... although all the above is part of writing. Right?

SABRIYA Writing Journal 4: Writing Rules

I've started to write, after many weeks of planning and plotting. Now, the rules of writing, for me, will vary day-to-day. Not that the rules change, but because I'll forget them from one day to the next. Thus the critical need for rewriting and remembering the rules.

MY WRITING RULES:

The following assume I've taken the time to outline the story, and completed due diligence in researching the broader aspects of the era and characters—both critical writing tasks, which in this case I've done. The rules below are not about general research, planning or plotting (see Journal entires 1-3) but about stringing the words together for the first time.  

1. VISUALIZE FIRST. Take time to visualize the scene as if watching a movie. This may be the most time consuming thing about writing—NOT WRITING.
2. START OBJECTIVE. Every scene should begin with a paragraph from an objective or universal Point-of-View (POV) that describes the setting and characters in the scene with a disaster close at hand. By objective POV I mean the POV of someone NOT in the scene—the narrator—who can see everything about the scene, e.g. God's POV.
3. ONE POV. After that first objective POV paragraph, every other paragraph in a scene must be told from a single character's POV who is IN THE SCENE, perhaps the POV of the most emotionally conflicted character.
4. WRITE FOR IRONY. Every description, and perhaps line of dialogue, should contain an ironic comparison. 
5. WRITE TO TARGET. First draft not so much, but second draft must condense word count to the target number, OR revise the rest of the chapter or book so word count goal (overall) is observed.
6. WRITE ATTITUDE. Write with an emotional attitude that channels the POV character. Nothing in this word is clean and objective. Even God has an attitude and sometimes he expresses with with catastrophic results. Attitudes vary from sarcasm to sweetness, from retribution to forgiveness. Vary the attitude as you vary the POV. 
7. END ON CLIFF. Every scene ends with a cliff hanger described by Step 3 (the disaster step) of the Scene-Sequel structure pattern. In some cases this may be an objective, universal POV, like the first paragraph of the scene. (more on Scene-Sequel below)
8. RIGHT WORD. Never hesitate to take the time to find the right word, turn-of-phrase, or trope. (more on tropes below)

Scene-Sequel Structure Pattern

Writing in a Scene-Sequel pattern is method of structuring your writing at a paragraph, sentence, or micro level. If you deconstruct the best fiction writers' output, you will see it. I always start out writing a new project by following this pattern anally, by putting these hidden steps in Scrivener to constantly remind me. After a few weeks the pattern becomes almost automatic.

In every scene-sequel sequence there is a DISASTER that spurs the action forward (or in a new direction...a mini-turning point). Here's a diagram from my on-line workshop (Storycraft Training). An explanation follows.

Novel Scene-Sequel Sequence (simplified)

Running from left to right in the above diagram. (1) The protagonist has a physical GOAL to achieve. (2) The protagonist takes action to achieve that goal, and in so doing creates CONFLICT with the antagonist. (3) Because of the conflict, the goal is not fully achieved, resulting in a DISASTER. (4) The protagonist experiences an EMOTIONAL REACTION, which acts as a motivation to keep going. (5) The protagonist spends some time evaluating in his mind (THOUGHT) the DILEMMA faced, until... (6) The protagonist makes a decision about the next goal and takes the fist steps to achieve it. [And the process REPEATS starting with the new goal.]

Tropes

Using tropes in your writing is like writing with subtext—it keeps the reader intrigued and intellectually engaged.  Here is a summary of useful tropes copied from Google's AI engine.

Tropes are recurring themes, ideas, or literary devices used in storytelling. They can be categorized into various types. Tropes can be elements of character, plot, or setting, and they often reappear in different stories, sometimes becoming defining characteristics of a genre. 

Here's a breakdown of some common types of literary tropes: 

Metaphor: A comparison between two unlike things without using "like" or "as" (e.g., "Juliet is the sun"). 

Simile: A comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as" (e.g., "Her smile was like sunshine"). 

Irony: A figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the words (e.g., saying "Oh, fantastic!" when something bad happens). 

Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part is used to represent the whole (e.g., "wheels" for a car). 

Metonymy: A figure of speech in which one thing is used to represent something else with which it is closely associated (e.g., "the crown" for the monarchy). 

Hyperbole: Exaggeration used for emphasis or effect. 

Litotes: Understatement, often for ironic effect (e.g., saying "not bad" when something is actually very good). 

SABRIYA Writing Journal 3: Word Counts

I draft in Scrivener, which allows me to set target word lengths for each scene within a chapter.  Below I've expanded the Excel spreadsheet from Journal Entry No. 1, to calculate the word length for each chapter and scene, all based on the treatment. THESE ARE ALL TARGETS AND THEY WILL CHANGE, BUT THIS ANAL WORK  PROVIDES A FOUNDATION AND DIRECTION. The closer I stay to it, the closer I will arrive at my target book length.

The table below shows that there are 17 chapters of lengths 3250 to 4500 words. There are 63 scenes of lengths 500 to 4500, the 4500 scene filling an entire chapter (9). The average scene length being only 1143 words.  The final manuscript target length being 72,000 words.

The "0" cells compare two different ways to calculate the word counts so they add up to 72,000. If one of the "0" cells does not show a "0" I know one of my calculations is wrong. Notice the chapter breaks favor the length of the chapter and not the end of one of the 21 macro beats (grey).

The green lines represent the backstory, flashbacks discussed in Journal Entry No. 2— notice the FB scenes are very short, as flashbacks should be.

Everyday when I think through this stuff I imagine a revision to the treatment or micro beats. I make notes of those in the treatment, which I will be following as I write. In fact, when I write a scene, I'll copy the treatment paragraphs for that scene and paste them into the Scrivener document,  which gives me beginning copy for that scene. For instance just before starting this journal entry I copied the treatment paragraph for Chapter 1 Scene 1 into Scrivener. I have the target for that scene set to 1,000 words. The treatment paragraphs were only 275 words. That gets me going and I started to rewrite and expand.

Here's what the Scrivener Binder (left margin) looks like for the first four chapters and 12 scenes.

Each one of those 12 scenes (text documents) has a word length target set for it. As I write, a growth bar appears at the bottom of my manuscript page in blue. When I hit the target of 1,000 words the bar will turn green. If I go beyond 1,000 words the growth bar will turn red. After I pasted in the treatment paragraph to what I was calling Shenzhen (but it's changed now to Hong Chi) I edited the first sentence. The document was then 271 words of my 1,000 and this is what the bottom of the page looked like...

If I write 1,223 words it looks like this, meaning I'm over and must edit down, thus keeping me on target.

So, I have started to write, although I will stop often to research what I am writing about. My protagonist, in addition to being the glamorous Thai wife of the British consulate, is also a Wing Chun practitioner of some advanced skill.  Wing Chun is the mysterious and hidden form of Kung Fu developed by Ypi Man (1893–1972) who passed it on to Bruce Lee's who made the form famous. So, one of my research steps will be to watch the "Ip Man" Blu Ray trilogy...for the third time.

Ah, here''s my first sentence... I'm sure it will change:

In the dead of night thirty-three thousand taxi sedans and motorcycles jammed the streets of Hong Chi shuttled men and women from the crowded luxury shops in Chao, to the colorful nightlife in Yezong and the go-go bars of Qu Plaza, where hundreds of young women exposed their assets just a block from Assumption Cathedral in one direction and the stiff upper lip British Consulate in the other. 

A distant siren wailed.