Confessions of a Steampunk Sequel — Part 7

My apologies for the lateness of this post.

And the sequel adventures march onward…

I’ve spent the last week taking that completed draft and attempting to make it fit for human consumption. 

This included putting in the proper names for ship parts, adding a few literary quotes/references, adding in some proper Victorian terms, and fixing any errors I came across.

The draft is by no means perfect or finished, but off to the beta readers it goes.

Some of them were quite excited about it.  The day after I tweeted that I finished the draft I got an email from a beta going, “Saw it’s done, where is it?”  LOVE LOVE LOVE such enthusiasm.  I hope everyone likes it. 

The synopsis has also been written.  Often I’ll work off at the very least a skeleton of a synopsis, but this story has been so wonky in so many respects that I had to actually finish the draft because I *didn’t know how it ended*.

I’m still not sure if the first chapter works, we’ll have to see.  I listened to “Through Glass” by Stone Sour on endless loop through much of my December drafting (with a dash of Emilie Autumn for Steampunk-spiration) and I think it shows. 

Now, to get those first three chapters and the synopsis off to my editor….

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The Steampunk Novel Diary: plot, characters, both?

by Marie-Claude Bourque

STEAMPUNK WORD OF THE WEEK:  Abbess – Brothel Madam (from Steampunk Lexican for iPhone)

Doing those workshops with Lolita Theresa gave me lots to think about, especially when we started to talk about steampunk archetypes.

Since I’m writing an adventure, I was pretty much focus on plot, looking at my 3 acts and the main conflicts both internal (my mystic witch heroine confronted with characters that are not quite human) and external (fighting the bad guys).

But then, as I always do, I dug out my good old Donald Maass workbook to fill up the questionnaires, mostly those about characters, and especially the secondary ones.

And a funny thing happened, I fell in love with them. I already love my hero and heroine but now, I feel for my “fallen” Victorian lady and her love of beauty, my witch/widow/emporium owner who believes in love and also for my silent chief engineer who sacrifices his life to give a good future to his orphan niece.

I realize that all stories are mostly about characters (and you do want to see them sort stuff out, i.e. plot). Loving our characters is the true solution to writers block because you can’t wait to spend time with them!

So tell me, writers out there! Plot or characters or both?

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