Secret oaths administered
after the manner of the ancients.

Plot Development

Think of crafting a novel in the same manner an architect drafts a design for a new building. She does so one layer at a time, using special paper so she can copy certain information and carry it forward to the next layer. This is the strategy I use when crafting my novels. Secret Combinations, which I envision playing out over the course of three books, is now well on its way through the process.

The first layer, or the core layer, of story development is that of determining you actually have a story to tell. There’s no reason to invest thousands of man-hours on a project until you have confirmed you’re telling a story and not just a series of events. To do so, I use a method I learned from David Morrell, best-selling thriller writer and father of Rambo (figuratively speaking, of course). The idea is to do your thinking on the page. Actually write down your thoughts and organize them as you go, rather than discussing them with others, mulling them over internally, or leaving scrap notes all over your home and office. The method is essentially that of having a written dialogue with yourself. You write fast and pay little attention to grammar, etc. The point is to let your thoughts flow while pushing yourself to refine your ideas.

You want to make sure all of the essentials of plot and character are soundly in place and a story exists before moving on to the next layer. For me, I know I’m done with this layer when I can state a solid story premise.

Here’s a short sample of the kind of banter I have with myself:

Penz: Well, they’re rough. I like their potential, though. The revelation and reversals for parts two and three need work. I think it’s a good start. We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. Before we can judge the climaxes, we have to understand the stakes, and before we can understand the stakes, we have to understand the characters and their deepest fears and desires. Knowing where we want to go with the climax we can then use that to shape our characters.

Eric: You’re absolutely right. Everything spawns out of the character’s most intimate fears and desires. So let’s go there next.

Penz: Then who drives the story? Whose motivations are what set the story into motion?

Eric: Well, that would have to be Isaac, without whose actions the story would not come to pass and the world of the story would be the same as our own—though the scary part is if in fact they are the same.

And so on. I go on and on with myself for over thirty pages. By the time I’m through I’ve discussed theme, emotion, stakes, premise, and everything in between. Here’s a sampling of what I came up with.

Theme: There are real and dangerous consequences that we overlook and ignore due to our own ignorance and arrogance. Eventually we all have to pay the costs for our actions. And that means that unlike in fairy tales, in this story evil can and may win.

Idea: All truth is connected. Therefore, I will attempt to connect all of the major world myths or beliefs, including deity or God, Satan, Creationism, Extraterrestrials, and Life after Death.

Emotion: Mortal vulnerability. Imagine how a parent might feel as they witness their young child narrowly and blindly escape death or serious injury. In fact, imagine the parent inadvertently has a hand or influence in this child’s near doom. After the adrenaline subsides and the parent takes a deep breath, they will inevitably feel a stab to the gut, a wrenching of the heart like no other as they consider what might have happened and how close disaster had come. This is how the reader must feel. They must feel as fragile and vulnerable as a young child who narrowly escapes harm while also being aware of the consequences due to being as wise and aware as their parents.

Protagonist’s Most Intimate Desire: After Vietnam and while a student at the university, Abe met Sara. They fell hard and fast in love. She was a promising scientist, specializing in genetics. They married, mainly because Abe wouldn’t have it otherwise. She was the love of his life and he would not make the mistake of letting her go. He couldn’t imagine her out there in the world without him. Creating a family born out of a loving relationship was what he wanted above all else. He would not risk finding love again.

These are just a few statements regarding story elements drawn out of the conversation with myself. In the end, I knew I was ready for the next layer when I came up with the following premise:

As the war in Iraq ignites, archeologist Abe is called in to protect the world’s oldest treasure, the last remnants of art, history, and science from the first human civilization. Encouraged by secret forces within the US government and driven by his own troubled faith, Abe can’t resist an opportunity to continue his life-long pursuit of tangible, physical proof of the existence of the divine. And what better place to do so then where it all began? And then he meets a man with a mysterious past and impossible identity who tests his faith to the point that Abe finds himself with a gun in his hand prepared to kill in the name of God. The choice of whom he kills will dictate the outcome of the long awaited final struggle between good and evil, as well as destroy or save the family he had believed was already lost to him.

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Pushing Cryptid in Pennsylvania.