Sunday, February 14, 2010

More of the planning

The next two points are the ones I consider most important. They are what and why. What does each character want and why do they want it. The why has more than one part. Not only why do they want it but why can't they have it. Since each character in a story wants different things for different reasons and why they can or can't have their desire are also different. These play an important part in the road map I draw to get from the beginning to the end of a story. Each scene has a component of what and why. What is the purpose of the scene and why a character is chosen to tell the scene. While planning my current story I realized several things and some of these didn't occur while I was doing the rough draft but came earlier in the story. At the onset the heroine wanted three things that seemed impossible. When she is given the chance to obtain one of her wishes there is a twist. She must leave her world and travel to an alternate one never to return to her world. There became a big why. Why would she choose to go. After figuring out why her other two desires were not obtainable, I had the reason she could accept this. Her real desire became the desire to live. Thus ended the first scene. The hero had other desires. He is a man of ancient Egypt, not the one we know of but one that is similar in many respects. He wants to follow the god Horu. His father has given him to the priests of an alien god, Aken Re. He desires to run away but something is keeping him from doing this. He needs to figure why, especially when a large hawk appears with an amulet naming him as belonging to Horu. The hawk is different from the hawks he knows since it often flies at night. The hero has his first desire and that is belonging to his chosen god, or does he? Does his father's command have more power than the hero's wishes.
This kind of what and why was taken while I laid out the road map for my story in a chapter synopsis which often changed as I wrote the book.

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