Writing Out a New Idea

I have been absent from the blogosphere these last couple of weeks as I have devoted my time, energy and focus to building my business with ACN. I have missed posting on my blog, but in those few moments I have had available over the last couple weeks where I could have posted something I struggled to come up with something of interest.

Last week I had a little time to visit one of my favorite sites, Writing.com, to see what has been going on in my absence. In my favorites folder I have a link to a writing contest called The Writer's Cramp where you are given a prompt and you have 24 hours to write a story of 1,000 words or less that fits the prompt and/or the requirements of the prompt. Thursday's prompt gave me a really good idea for a story, but I didn't have time to write it out for the contest.

The idea kept bouncing around in my brain until I sat down over the weekend and started pounding it out. It still needs some tweaking, but I liked what I put down. I shared it with my wife after I was done and, because I had written the ending in such a way as to leave it open for more, she was really curious as to what would come next. So we started tossing ideas back and forth about where it could lead and what could take place.

I have to laugh a little about the difference between my wife and I, though. While this first installment has tension and dramatic elements, I totally set it up for an action/adventure story. The first thing my wife says after telling me how good she thought what I had written was is that the main character needs a girl, that he needs to fall in love, and starts to outline how to make it a romance. I think I offended her a little bit when I laughed at that.

But that is what I love about my wife. She helps open my mind to aspects that I hadn't considered to reach a larger audience than what I would have reached on my own. Together, we came up with a really good character that can develop into a love interest for the main character without turning the story into a space-age Harlequin romance novel. She is a good strong character that will make a significant contribution to the story.

While developing the character, my wife initially pictured her as a green-eyed red-head, but we had to change her to a brunette for practical reasons and because another story I am working on already has a red-head. My wife has brown hair and green eyes so I told her that I would just pattern my character after her. She was a little unsure of that idea because she was afraid of seeing how I would describe her in print. "That's easy," I reassured her as we were fixing dinner. "She will be beautiful, strong, driven, capable, resourceful ... and she is always right ... at least in her mind." That last comment earned me an indignant punch in the arm. It is a good thing I waited until she put down the knife to throw in that last bit.

We have a lot of elements to the story put together, but we are still undecided on the main aspect of the overall plot. We agree that our main character will be trying to reveal some great secret or plot to break the antagonist's hold on the people, but we haven't decided yet what that will be. If you have seen the movie Serenity, elements of our plot are similar to theirs but we don't want to deal with populace-passifying drugs or Reavers.

I hope you will take a few minutes and read this first installment that I have given the simple title of Shore Leave and let me know what you think. Do you think the story has potential? Would you like to read more? What ideas do you have for the plot? What suggestions do you have for improving what has been written so far? I would love any feedback you can give me!