Free Plotting Lessons Part Two – Just when you think you’ve learned all you can about plotting, then you discover F. This, of course, is a follow up to Free Plotting Lessons Here from author Andy Zach, my previous blog post.
What do you get? First, you learn about hooks.
Free Plotting Lessons Part Two from Author Andy Zach – Lesson 3 – Start with Your Hook
Doesn’t that set off questions? Who is Prim? Who is the narrator? What’s the ‘reaping’?
From the sublime (in terms of book sales) to the ridiculous: my own novel Zombie Turkeys hook.
Zombie Turkeys – Chapter 1 Bartonville
Zombie Turkeys Chapter 1 Icon
He felt different. More energetic, more alive. He bred with female after female in his flock without tiring. He stayed awake through the night. The turkey feared no predator.
Then a turkey hunter shot him.
The setting sun overlooked a crisp, clear evening in early November. South of Bartonville, Illinois, a farmer had leased his wood lot to two turkey hunters. Big and burly in their bulky camouflaged outfits, they had just bagged one.
“Good shot, Pete!”
“He’s a big ‘un!”
Pete and Bob walked up to the tom turkey, bleeding on the cold ground. The rest of the flock had scattered into the woods. He had exceptionally good plumage and weighed perhaps twenty pounds. Pete reached down and picked him up by the neck.
“He weighs at least twenty-five pounds!”
Then the turkey’s eyes opened—and gleamed red. He kicked with his spurs and pecked savagely at Pete’s arms and eyes. Dozens of his hens attacked the men from behind.
“Gobble! Gobble!”
He felt different. More energetic, more alive. The turkey had no memory of being shot, but a certain turkey satisfaction at killing his killers. He also enjoyed pecking at their dead meat. He had always liked frogs, but this meat tasted better. The boss turkey led his flock down the road, in search of more predators to eat.
Now you practice writing an irresistible hook! Submit it in the comments to this blog. The best hook gets a free ebook: Zombie Turkeys or My Undead Mother-in-law.
Free Plotting Lessons Second – Fill in your scenes
Each scene MUST serve a purpose.
Advance the plot: X does Y to Z.
Develop your characters. Make them real people with strengths and weaknesses: X is unfaithful but hardworking. Z is loyal but dumb.
Give the reader information. X was abused as a child, but very kind. Z was happy as a child, but has a secret. Engage the reader. Make them care.
Ideally, do all three at once in the same scene, in every sentence.
Finish with a hook for the next chapter. Force the reader to read the next chapter!
Review your plot outline. Pick one chapter and break it into scenes.
What happens first? Then what logically flows from that event? What do the characters do? How do they react? Portray the effects from each scene. Tug at the reader’s heart.
For your next exercise, break one of your chapters from your outline into scenes. Post your outline as a comment or send it to me. I’ll randomly select one and send you a free ebook.
I didn’t have a scene chart with Zombie Turkeys, and I struggled. Then I learned about scene charts from Rachel Aaron in her book:
‘Developing Your Plot Updated’ is a class I wrote and taught eight years ago. Now you get to learn it all for free, with the new things I’ve learned in the past eight years and through ten self-published books. I’ll give YOU Free Plotting Lessons right now in this blog post, right from the class.
Developing Your Plot Updated – Cast of Characters
First, there’s me, the teacher character, Andy Zach. If you’re not familiar with my biography on this site, you can go to Amazon, Square, or to Goodreads and find out about me and my books.
Then there’s you, one of many student characters. What have you written? Are you writing? What will you write? Please share your plot/novel/work ideas with me and the class by commenting below.
You MUST comment to participate in this class–or I’ll send the zombie turkeys after you!
That’s my big turkey stick. The carrot is, I will give a free ebook of Zombie Turkeys to one of the commenters!
Start commenting – NOW!
Developing Your Plot Updated- Where Will You Go with Your Idea?
You’ve got your great idea for your novel. What’s next? Authors fall into a spectrum of two approaches. First, there are plotters, who plan out the plot of their book and then write to that plan. Then there are ‘pantsers’, those who sit on their pants and type away until a book emerges–or not. Then there are endless variations between the two. I’m firmly in the first group. If you want to learn the pantser approach, find another author! I can’t even imagine how I’d write that way, and I’ve got a good imagination.
Let’s take my first novel, Zombie Turkeys.I created a chapter outline of the book on my first day of writing it duringNaNoMo.
Accidents happen. Especially around zombie turkeys. Then you add zombie humans, and problems proliferate. Mix in some ill-planned genetic engineering, and things get crazy.The insanity continues, from the story where zombies are merged with cucumbers to the one where two basement-dwelling nerds gain access to all video content from the past two hundred years—from aliens.Andy Zach pulls out all the stops on his imagination as he serves up this smorgasbord of silliness. Try it. Laughter is good for your soul
One queen saw the problem more clearly than anyone else. Her king and prince had both drowned only a short distance from the shore because no one saw them signing for help. The queen sat vigil all night long, and in the morning she sent heralds with large signs in every language to all the humans, elves, dwarves, fairies, leprechauns, and even a dragon. She pled with all to find something that would let creatures communicate without signs or gestures when they couldn’t see each other. She promised she would give whatever was in her power to whoever could accomplish this.
I left the air-conditioned comfort of the taxi, and the sights, sounds, and smells of the old bazaar in Jeddah assailed me: a robe-clad man on camel plodded by, an adjacent fishmonger added his smell to the fresh dung in the street, and the hawkers yelled their wares.
I could only speak Arabic at a middle school level, but as I strolled through the bazaar, I heard “Fresh dates!”…”Highest quality rugs!”…”Finest gold jewelry!”… “Ancient books! The rarest in Saudi Arabia!”
My head snapped around. A bald, stumpy man in a white caftan saw me look and said, “Books? You want ancient books?”
“Yes.” I spoke carefully, knowing my poor accent. “Can you speak English?” I didn’t have much hope.
The scene was chaos! I knew immediately I was in a different country, judging by the languages I couldn’t understand. I had also determined this was no modern city—I seemed to be on the outskirts of town amid a swarming crowd. Men were shouting and women were crying; meanwhile, I was still trying to figure out how I had gotten there and where exactly I was. Several seconds later, however, that question was answered.
Now, what was he going to do? Brice Butterworth’s boss just told him to double the productivity of Vegan Inc.’s pickle strain they used for their Kilwowski Pickle brand. That was completely impossible.
But keeping his job required it. Brice was the low man on the genetic engineering totem pole at Vegan Inc., the last one hired and the first one to be fired if another recession hit.
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t face this. So he cruised the internet. “The origin of zombie turkeys? I didn’t know they’d found that. Hmm, a Midley Beacon exclusive, the foremost zombie news source,” he read out loud.
“Whatcha doing, Brice?” asked my boss Wilma O’Reilly after sneaking up behind me.
I jumped. As usual, I was cruising the internet, bored with my job. How awkward.
We worked at Vegan Inc., an agricultural conglomerate. I was their lead geneticist in charge of enhancing the qualities of the corporation’s vegetable products through genetic modification.
He woke up staring out his windshield at the green grass of the highway median. Dully, Anthony listened to the sound of his car’s engine cooling, ticking like a clock. He didn’t know why he was here or how he got here.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” came a voice from outside the car.
Turning his head toward the sound, he realized he was upside down, supported by his seat belt and his legs, which were strangely numb.
“Uh,” he croaked.
* * *
“We’re going to cast your leg,” said the nurse in the ambulance. Her name tag read Louise Tall, but she didn’t seem tall. “What’s your name?”
“Uh, Anthony. Anthony Jones.”
“Do you know your height and weight, Anthony?”
“Five-eleven. Two ten. I need to lose some weight. Ow!”
I need to tell you about my own zombie story. It’s about how my parents became zombies.
As soon as the zombie turkeys appeared in Illinois, I started cultures of their zombie turkey bacteria in petri dishes. When other animals, squirrels, rabbits, and cows began turning zombie, I added cultures of their bacteria. I sought the ultimate source of animal revivification. It was my PhD thesis and my life’s work.
I’ve always wanted to revive animals from the dead. It seemed the secret was through the special bacteria for each species. Naturally, when humans became zombies, I cultivated their bacteria too.
He was dead. At least, his business was. And without his business, his wife would leave him and take their new baby. Then he might as well be dead.
His dad had run the Elysium Fields Mortuary for thirty years and had made a killing at it. The first and only mortuary in their small town of Hillvale, everyone got buried there. He charged normal prices, he was friendly, and he helped their community. His dad said to him when he was a teen, “Irving, after you get your college degree, go to mortuary school, and when you come out, I’ll hire you and then turn the business over to you. You’ll be set for life.”
The Taser hit me in the back. I convulsed uncontrollably, shocked out of sleep.
“Okay, wakey, wakey. Time to go model for your mistress,” squeaked a high tenor.
The bearded hulk who guarded us held his Taser ready, in case Lulu and I weren’t fast enough. He was so hairy, I couldn’t tell where his beard ended and his chest began. We donned the haute couture apparel set before us. He nodded his approval and gestured toward the door. He always followed us with his Taser.
“We’ve been here weeks and we don’t know your name. What shall we call you?” I ventured. I had some vague hope of putting him at his ease so we could escape.
He laughed. “Call me Gronk.” He wheezed when he laughed.
So I got him to laugh. Maybe that was progress. Maybe not. He also laughed when he tortured us with the Taser.
“Let me check you, Sharon,” Lulu whispered. She examined my back, where the Taser had hit my sleeping form. My muscles still ached. “No marks.”
Breeding zombie corgis wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Heather Mallorn sighed as she reviewed accounts for Her Majesty’s Corgis in Hanna City, Illinois. Certainly, she made plenty on each zombie corgi she sold. Normally, corgi puppies went for $1,200. She earned double that for zombies. The zombie corgies were invincible guard dogs, and cute too, with bright-red eyes. They were no harder to train than regular corgis, just slightly more aggressive. Well, a lot more aggressive.
Kayla Verdera, disabled 7th-grade student and superhero
“Oh no! Did you hear what I just heard?” Aubrey said as soon as she and I rushed up to Jeremy and Dan coming off their bus in the morning at Maryville Middle School.
“No!” Jeremy said, rolling off the bus in his electric wheelchair. Jeremy Gentle was a spindly kid with cerebral palsy. I’d never looked twice at him when I was the most popular and smartest girl in the school. Then I lost my speech and balance to spinal meningitis last year, and I was put in the special-needs class. After we were together awhile, I learned he was as smart as me.
“Of course I heard,” said Dan, who walked behind Jeremy’s wheelchair while holding the back of it and carrying his white cane. “Do you think I’m deaf as well as blind?”
Enough talking! I sent the thought to them all, using my telepathic power. This is too slow!Our math teacher’s car was stolen last night. Mr. Williamson went to play basketball downtown, and when he came out, his car was gone.
I like my friends, but I wish they’d get to the point. We all attended a special disabled class at Maryville Middle School. Disabled kids used to creep me out. Now I, Kayla Verdera, was one of them.
How fascinating! Dancer thought. This book says there are libraries where hundreds of books live. It also says the fiction books are in order by author name.
Dancer scurried off Your Sixth Year Reader to look at Jeremy Gentle’s bookshelf again. Jeremy was Dancer’s owner and unknowing educator. Ever since he’d taught himself to read by studying the newspapers lining the bottom of his cage, Dancer had craved reading.
He hadn’t figured out why he’d started reading. One day he’d noticed patterns in the markings. He saw they repeated themselves in clumps. Then the clumps formed more patterns. He also listened to his owners differently. They also spoke in patterns. “Jeremy” was always called “Jeremy” or “Jeremy Gentle” by his mother, and sometimes by his father.
Diane Newby, George Newby, Lulu Gutierrez, and Sharon Wyndham, privateers
“Arrrgh! Me hearies, eat hearty!” said a short, stocky pirate with an eye patch and a captain’s hat seemingly copied from Cap’n Crunch. The pirate gestured, with a hook instead of a right hand, toward an enormous banquet table laden with food. The one visible eye gleamed red.
“Arrrgh! Where’s the skilly and duff?” said a refrigerator-sized bald pirate with an enormous mustache. His eyes also shone crimson.
“Arrrgh! That be the tacos and enchiladas,” said a small, beautiful pirate with dark hair bound by a red bandanna and smiling blood-red eyes. She pointed with her cutlass toward the Mexican section of the smorgasbord.
“Arrrgh! You be a Mexican pirate?” said a blond pirate with broad shoulders and a Cockney accent. She wore her hair in a long queue emerging from a bloody headband around her forehead. She also had glowing ruby eyes.
“That’s your problem, isn’t it? Try the local apartments. Look for rooms to rent on the internet. It’s not that hard to find a place in Ohio.”
I could tell by his grim expression he was serious this time. He’d been nagging me for nearly a year to move out and “set up housekeeping” ever since I’d graduated from the state university with my BA in video game art and my minor in computer science. I’d managed to wheedle him out of it and delay the date. Until now.
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