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Emergency Mode v.s. Routine Mode
In Emergency Mode, you’re rarely able to say “no” to anything, because all your resources are focused on merely staying alive. You lurch from one crisis to the next. It’s in Routine Mode that you are able to set goals that go beyond survival. You can plan ahead and look at your purpose. I am…
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“But Emergencies are Thrilling!!”
A shout out to my reader in Ireland! I see your flag every post in my stats. (Howw arrr ye en te emreld isle? Hallooh from Australia!) When your team is in Emergency Mode, life is thrilling. You feel really “alive”. You have to react quickly, like a jet pilot in a dog fight. Every…
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Breaking Free – Chapters One and Two
Seventeen year old Em works in a takeaway shop and is dominated by an angry mother.
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Can you plot a story backwards?
This is the Freytag Pyramid, which breaks narrative into its parts. Normally, we start at the beginning of the story on the exposition and follow through cronologically to the end, the denouement. (It’s Fronch, so don’t say the ‘nt’ on the end, of course.) I set myself a challenge of plotting a narrative that has…
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Restyle Your Handwriting – Journal
Feedback please!!!! I’m about to launch some handwriting journals that teach you to “Restyle Your Handwriting” and “Refresh Your Identity.” The plan is to put them up on Kickstarter or similar. These 64 page handwriting books (A4 size) step you through a series of exercises, to train you to freely write in the new handwriting…
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Breaking Free – THE Plot Outline
Plot outline document of Escaping Well.
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Sleeping in her car, the attic room (Smoothing out the plot kinks)
I wove the plot together in the last few days and it works well, but it’s not a 10/10. Yet. There are kinks at the 3/4 mark where I know I’m forcing the plot instead of letting it play out. It’s too quick. It needs more space. Consequently, I’ve let the plot outline sit for…
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Breaking Free – Supporting Character Sketches
24 March – I’ve changed the working title from “Escaping Well” to “Breaking Free.” Simple plot, complex characters. That’s what we’re going for. I’d love to hear your comments: Which character is more fun? Who do you like more? These two characters have a significant function in the story, but they don’t have a strong…
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Breaking Free – Another go at the plot
24 March – I’ve changed the working title of this project from Escaping Well to Breaking Free. I find that to put a story together, I keep mowing over the plot, writing and rewriting to get it to sit nicely. In the following document, I’m writing from memory, from the heart. I’m not cutting and…
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Breaking Free – Conversation with ChatGPT
This is a planning document, helping me clarify my thoughts around the three main threads in the upcoming novel, Escaping Well. I had a conversation with ChatGPT, and was very pleased at the insights it spat out. It is not creating any storyline, but it is certainly giving positive feedback, which made me feel good…
This is Jotham - Author 