This site updated May 11, 2008. Woman In Black Lace ISBN-13: 978-1-60272-252-1 (Electronic) Available from: Amber Quill Press   Passions Sweet Ecstasies ISBN:-13 978-1-60272-957-5 (Paperback) Available from: Amber Quill Press Amazon.com

PLOTTING MADE EASY Plotting is simple, but I've heard lectures making it so convoluted it's a wonder any new writer ever conquers it. It doesn't matter what genre you're writing in: You begin with two people (or one person, an organization, entity or whatever) who want something. Obtaining the something is their GOAL, the object of their ambition. Sometimes teachers talk about Objective as a third thing, but the dictionary defines them as synonymous. Personally, I've always had great difficulty trying to sort them out as different. I suggest you forget trying. Once you know the GOAL, you must know why your characters want this something. For instance, a serial killer wants to continue to kill; the detective wants to stop him/her. Sexy blockade runner Rhett Butler wants Scarlett's love, but Scarlett pines for milk-toast Ashley. This is MOTIVATION. It's what puts characters in opposition and creates the tension crucial to every story. PLOT evolves as you put your characters in motion toward their goals and something blocks them from getting there. In Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey, Odysseus overcomes challenge after challenge in the ten years it takes him to travel from Troy after the Trojan War to home. The first block is meeting up with the Cyclops, who plans to keep him and his men as slaves. Odysseus escapes by blinding the one-eyed giant. The longer the story, the more blocks are necessary, each more challenging than the last. There's resolution each time, but they complicate the journey and over the course of the book the less confident the characters become that they'll get what they want. Two-thirds to three-fourths of the way through the story comes almost the worst block, convincing both characters and readers that all is lost. But then hope appears at the end of the tunnel. You aren't finished with PLOT yet. Shortly before the close of your book, you need a DARK MOMENT (aka the MOMENT OF CRISIS). That will be the most insurmountable block of all. In the movie ET, it's the death of the extraterrestrial. There's no way for the little hero to achieve his goal. From there, your characters, and thus your readers, must be led to the light - to an ending that satisfies, one in which the good people (or the almost-good people) finally get what they want. Gone with the Wind is NOT a good example of this: ET must go home. Big excitement! WOMAN IN BLACK LACE made the Amber Quill Heat Best Seller list in April! I dedicated it to E.J. Gilmer, my editor, because at the start of the 2008 Writer's Guild of America strike, Jay Leno, host of The Tonight Show, said, "Without writers I'm not funny." Actually, before the strike was settled, he was fabulous during the two months he carried the show. His ratings outranked those of his competitors. But his comment triggered the acknowledgment that an author's work wouldn't be publishable without an editor. Kudos to E.J. for her skillful help on my best seller. Every time I write something on my own I cringe because E. J. hasn't seen it first.