New WIP!

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged, apologies all, but I've been hanging on until I had something concrete to blog about!

Since having 'All Bets Are On' finalised I've been busy putting together ideas for my next story. The way it works (for me at least) is that I send my three best ideas over to my editor and she chooses the one she thinks has the most potential. The next step is for me to come up with detailed character outlines (covering goal, motivation, conflict as well as background details) and a story plan. This bit takes a long time but it's one of my favourite parts of my whole writing process.

This time it has taken three weeks, during which I've filled in character questionnaires (I use the ones in Liz Fielding's Little Book Of Writing Romance), thought about locations and used my plotboard to develop a three act story outline. If you hadn't already guessed, I am most definitely not a pantser! For the first time with this story, I've also discovered Pinterest, which is terrific fun and a terrific time suck. What it has done is given me some lovely visual inspiration for my story in a way I've never really had before. If you want to check my board out (as it is so far), click on the lovely Pinterest button my very clever 13 year old has created for me on the sidebar.

I have a working title for my story - 'The Get-Out Clause', and I've just received feedback from my editor on my story plan - I get a couple of pages of detailed advice. Some of it is the flagging up of potential pitfalls for the story before I begin writing it - for example in this story I have a second love interest for the heroine and my editor has pointed out that I need to keep tabs on this because it has huge potential to detract from the main romance. Other advice is more detailed, suggestions on how I can improve on my plot and how I can deepen the conflict of the main characters.

This is possibly the most prepared I've been for any of my stories so far, but I've learned a lot over the last year and one of the main things is that the more effort I put in at the beginning, the easier the actual writing becomes. I can't say that would be true for everyone - I know of people who have a rough idea and dive straight in and the thought fills me with horrified admiration - but  it's certainly true for me.

I'm off now to put in a couple of hours reviewing and revising my story plan in line with the editor's advice and then I will be kicking off with 1k a day. I will keep you posted on what I hope will be an easier book to write than the last one!