Finally, something resembling a plot

Last Friday night, Seppo and I went to a cafe in Berkeley to grab some after-dinner (more like after-dinner, after-Firefly) coffee. We got to talking about what we could use in our stories and came up with the highly original idea that we should use what we know. More specifically, we thought we should use intense experiences in our lives to bring to life the scenes/plot points of our stories.

Seppo may or may not want to discuss what it is that he experienced, but as for me, I figured that one of the things that I'll never forget is my mother laboring and giving birth to my little brother. During labor, there was a point when things were going wrong when she looked over at me, and in that one moment of clarity and silent communication, we both thought that she was going to die. Clearly she didn't, but at the time, we were both sure it was a certainty. Thank the Lord she came out of it fine.

Today, on our drive home from work, I solicited plot ideas from Seppo. The main woman character and her central conflict are clearly established already, as I will be using a younger sister of the main character from last year's novel. The problem was that I had no idea for a male lead or a plot -- you know, the plot, the thing that makes a story a story. We came up with the setup that the man will be a young doctor that she meets when her sister is giving birth, as well as a central conflict for their relationship, which very naturally led to an inner conflict for him to overcome. One of the problems is that I am not sure if men attended to ladies during the Regency era (1810 and on), so I will have to make sure that that bit is possible.

I am using RoughDraft 3.0 to write and yWriter to outline before and organize after. I am also going to use the snowflake method to help come up with the summary/outline.

Man, I am so much more organized this year than last that I have to wonder if I'm setting myself to run out of gas midway. Heh. All thoughts of uncertainty will be banished. Shoo!