Welcome to another Thursday. I’ve been so busy, it seems like only yesterday it was Wednesday. That being the case, here’s the Story of the Week.

It was inspired by a prompt generously sent my way by long-time subscriber Sue Baroo. Thanks, Sue.

Finding Strength in Each Other

Walter led Ava, a fresh-faced new employee, around the convention center.

“Today we’re hosting Survivors-Unite,” Walter said. They entered a room where attendees wore tuxedos with spy gadgets. “These people never recovered from Sean Connery being replaced as 007.”

“Daniel Craig wasn’t the first?” Ava asked.

The next room had people devastated by the closure of Blockbuster. “Wait,” Ava said. “People drove somewhere to rent movies? No streaming?”

In the third room, Ava guessed, “These are people who bailed their loser boyfriend out of jail. He ripped her off and disappeared.”

Walter blinked. “Wow. Super specific. You can moderate—or attend.”

Prompt: Trauma bonding

News on the Questionable Characters novel front… I’m getting close to finishing the detailed outline for this next draft. Yesterday, I sketched out the big finale scene. Based on work I did way back when I was designing the middle of Act Two, I knew my ending was going to need a major revision, but I decided not to worry about it until I reached the finale. The biggest change was that I decided to kill off a character right in the middle of the book. Following the Save the Cat story model I’m using, I needed to come up with something big for the mid-point. Unfortunately (at least for my character), that meant his demise. Oh well, I guess it sucked to be him. His sacrifice will be great for the mid-point, but it also meant creating big changes for the finale.

I don’t know if the following explanation will be fascinating or just TMI (for those of you have no interest in the technical parts of my writing journey), but this is what I’ve been dealing with this week. Feel free to skip to the end if you’re not into seeing how the sausage is made.

The Save the Cat model has 15 main beats, and the next-to-the-last beat is called the Finale. Just to keep the reader fully engaged (and to make us writers work our asses off at the end so it’s all satisfying for the reader), the writing guru who created the model, designed the Five-Point Finale. I won’t explain what each step does, but I’ll list them here in case you want to guess what each step might consist of: 1) Gathering the Team; 2) Executing the Plan; 3) The High Tower Surprise; 4) Dig Deep Down; and 5) Execution of the New Plan.

If it sounds kind of like juggling several balls at once, that’s because it is. While I still have to flesh out some of the details for each of the five points, at least I’ve figured out how I think it will all fit together. In one of the steps, I incorporated a technique I learned in my master screenwriting program. The class was called “Creating Interest Techniques,” and I think it will not only work well here in the finale, but probably in other spots as I flesh out the actual novel.

OK. I apologize if the above was too “Inside Baseball,” (one of my favorite writing expressions that people either love or don’t get at all), but I wanted to share my current journey.

Thanks for sticking around (if that applies).

Scotty out