Veil of the Rose Prologue

Hello, everyone! What have I done to keep myself busy while anxiously awaiting feedback from my beta readers (for THE GIRL MADE OF GOLD)? Well, I’ve been editing book two of HEMLOCK VEILS. It’s been so much fun jumping back into that world that I haven’t visited in far too long. I’ve missed Henry and Elizabeth dearly.

My point to this? I decided I want to share the prologue for book two (VEIL OF THE ROSE, which is a lose Sleeping Beauty retelling, but based in the same world as HEMLOCK VEILS and picking up a few months after HEMLOCK VEILS left off). So, if you’ve read HEMLOCK VEILS and want a hint of what’s next, check it out. If you haven’t read HEMLOCK VEILS, read this anyway (if you want, I mean). It doesn’t offer any spoilers, really. Just new insight we didn’t get with book one. Regardless, enjoy!

Celebrating the birth of a baby would prove a menial task for most immortals. Especially for other Wardens of the Magical Realm. But nothing had ever been more of an honor for this old man.

The new mother lay in her hospital bed, one shoulder of her gown untied. A blanket covered her recently bulging belly, and a barrette held back sweat-plastered hair. Her face flushed, her skin glowed. It defined the greatest kind of exertion, but her eyes defined a love of the highest capacity, one not even the immortal man had ever felt. Nor any man for that matter.

With occasional tears, the mother smiled and cooed soft noises at the infant in her arms—red, tiny, and wrapped in a pink blanket, and wearing a cap full of hair the color of her mother’s. The baby’s eyelids drooped with drowsiness only newborn babies could own: a drunkenness on mother’s milk. The father, just as teary-eyed, put an arm around his wife. They met each other’s eyes when their child’s would no longer open, and the old man, standing in the doorway, felt like an intruder on an intimate family moment. Out of respect, he looked down.

This baby wasn’t just any mortal though. She was special to the old man, which made her special to the other Wardens of this continent. One at a time, with the exception of the eldest, they entered the stark hospital room, joining father, mother, and newborn. Good health, a loving and loyal heart, courage: they placed their personal blessings upon the infant, her only acknowledgement of them the occasional twitch of a petite finger, embellished with a nail so teeny it was hardly visible at all.

At the Wardens’ blessings, the look on the new mother’s face was one of tolerance, at best. A Warden’s gift of fertility had given the couple what they’d prayed for, but the mother had dismissed the miracle of their pregnancy nine months before as a work of God.

The old man didn’t doubt that, but all prayers are answered through different means. It’s a mortal’s job to decide for themselves by which means those prayers are answered. To this woman, it simply couldn’t have been through her husband’s strange friends.

When the old man’s turn arrived—number eight of the nine Wardens—the mother’s smile turned from one of tolerance to one of warmth. She had grown fond of him during her pregnancy. He didn’t hold her disbelief against her. In fact, she was the way humans were supposed to be. They were supposed to be close-minded to this life. Even most the angelic souls are.

He bent and kissed the mother on the forehead, her skin warm and slightly sticky. After peeling the infant’s pink blanket slowly from her chin, in order to better view her, it hit him, what she was. He recoiled, staring at the chafed but beautiful miracle of life before him. The one he was partly responsible for. Roland, his eldest Warden brother, watched from the hallway. Technically his leader, and last of the nine, his eyes penetrated the old man’s back.

The old man turned to meet them, narrow but unreadable, while the other seven Wardens conversed happily to the side. Roland listened carefully, no doubt interested in what blessing the old man would place upon the baby. Roland too seemed aware of how special she would be one day. Only this knowledge seemed to have a different effect on him than it did on the old man.

He broke Roland’s gaze and turned back to the new family, meeting the father’s grass-colored eyes before his own fell upon the baby girl. In placing his hands on her head, he swallowed deeply, breathing through the rush that washed through his body. Discomfort radiated from the hallway, from Roland—lingering like a dark shadow over a heavenly landscape.

The old man spoke, blessing the baby with the same intuition and gifts her father had: the ability to see things and beings for what they truly were. And being moved by nothing more this his disheartening suspicion that Roland felt no reverence for this occasion, the old man whispered an added blessing on the baby: an immunity to curses.

However, he sensed that Roland, who would be the last of the Wardens to bless baby Elizabeth, would find a way to twist the old man’s blessing.

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The Plotter In You

Outlining: you either love it or you hate it. If you hate it, and would rather write by the seat of your pants, you’re what we call a pantser. They say there are two kinds of writers: plotters and pantsers. But I think you can be a good mix of both.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation in my writing group about the difference between plotting and pantsing, with an emphasis on storyboarding. It was received well, so after a few requests, I have decided to put all the juicy information in a (long) blog post.

Both plotting and pantsing have their pros and cons. What are you–a plotter, a pantser, or both? I, personally, am a bit of both, though I lean heavily on the plotting side. I outline, think of all the story beats, write each scene on sticky notes, and then plot it on my board.

But usually, the plot changes as the story progresses, and by the third act, I have to completely re-plot the remainder of the story just to keep my head on straight. By then, the outcome of the story has transformed into something I hadn’t expected when first plotting it out. And you know what? This is a good thing! Even the most ardent planners can be surprised with the direction their stories take.

What my process for plotting THE GIRL MADE OF GOLD looked like when I first started.

I mentioned that there are pros and cons to both pantsing and plotting, so let’s start there. Some of the pros of pantsing are:

• It lets your creative side take over
• As author Jessica Pennington said in a writing panel at Denver Comic Con last month, “It becomes less about me and more about the characters.”

Some of the cons, however, are:

• It doesn’t work well with deadlines
• You may run into the all-mighty Writer’s Block more frequently (I have a writer friend who is currently in this situation)

Or, as Chuck Sambuchino said (on pantsing), “Writing a book this way gives plotters hives.” I think that even the most creative, brilliant pantsers have something to gain from plotting. And that’s why for the majority of this post, I want to focus on plotting. Some of the types of plotting are:

• Writing general outlines
• Writing the different story beats, or events
• Daily diagrams: diagram the scene you’re going to work on each day (some people do this, plotting out the scene they’re about to write, and do it on a daily basis, rather than plotting the entire novel at once, before writing a single word)
• Book Bibles: notebooks with backgrounds on every character, details of the town in which your story takes place, etc.
• Some use the Fantasy Fiction Formula (by Deborah Chester), and use what’s called the SPOOC (structure, protagonist, objective, opponent, climax) method. If you’re unfamiliar with it, look it up. Many writers find it very useful.
• Storyboarding

All methods are effective and we are all so different, and work in such different ways, that what works well for some might not work well for others. Some writers even use a mix of all of them.

So, storyboarding. Why storyboard? Because…

• It allows feedback and input from others, including your agent and/or publisher
• It also prevents dead endings and stuck middles
• Helps us view the story as scenic rather than expository (the whole showing vs. telling thing)
• Helps us find the arc of the story
• It’s right-brained and creative (it is a visual representation of the story but also allows us to view the logical progression)
• It helps us remove scenes that don’t advance the plot
• It helps us find the right pacing and rhythm
• It allows us to write faster

I can attest to the writing faster part. Back in 2014, it took me about a month or two to plot out every single inch of HEMLOCK VEILS, so that when the time came to write, from start to finish, it took me only three months to write the entire 117,000-word manuscript.

“Storyboarding can greatly increase the ease and speed of writing a book,” Chuck Sambuchino says. “A journey can be a lot smoother if you know where you’re going… The magic of a storyboard is turning a book idea into a visual tool, which makes the story’s structure much easier to grasp and handle.”

While there are different methods of plotting, there are also different types of storyboarding (linear storyboarding, “W” storyboarding, etc.). And there are different methods to storyboarding (drawing it out on a white board, drawing on paper, using sticky notes or notecards, using software like Dramatica Pro, etc.). But the one I want to focus on in this post is the “W” Storyboard method.

First of all, if the idea of structure and outlining makes you fall asleep, remember you can keep it fun and engaging! Color code with markers, colored pencils, or even different sticky notes, and be as detailed as you’d like. You can even use pictures. Remember this is YOUR project–do what will motive YOU.

The “W” Storyboard Structure

There have been many variations of this over time, but the general points are the same, with a three-act structure (beginning, middle, and end). You can use it for any genre, whether you write fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, etc.

My favorite W storyboarding structure (sorry it it’s hard to read).

You can draw imaginary lines through your W and divide it up into three acts.

Act 1 (25% establish)

• Point 1: Triggering Event (the most important place to start your story)
• Down arrow: Setting Up the Problem (increasing the tension or drama)
• Point 2: First Turning Point (the first low point, where things bottom out)

Act 2 (50% build)

• Up arrow: Recovering from the Problem (where hope or new ideas provide positive momentum)
• Point 3: Conflict/Dilemma, or the Second Triggering Event (the “pop” moment, where your story percolates and then explodes)
• Down arrow: Deepening of the Problem
• Point 4: Second Turning Point, or the “Black Moment” (the lowest point in the book, hence point 4 being lower than point 2 on the W picture above)

Act 3 (25% resolve)

• Up arrow: Solving the Problem (it builds toward the resolution; new light or understanding has developed, and it brings a sense of completion or change)
• Twist/Epiphany, or the “OMG Moment” (complications arise on the way to the resolution)
• Point 5: End/Resolution (positive momentum builds)

There are different ways you can get started. Author Mary Carroll Moore brainstorms a list of 25 topics, chooses the 5 key points, and then places the points on the W.

Tips and Thoughts

• As Mary Carroll Moore says, you’re placing islands. But those islands must become continents, and storyboards provide that needed structure.
• One thing that is easy to keep in mind is that all your positive events in the story are always on the upslope and the negative events are always on the downslope. This is a great formula for where to place things.
• The W doesn’t have to be perfect! It can be all over the place, forming little squiggles or W’s within the larger W. As long as all five points of the W are met, it doesn’t matter how many ups and downs there are in between.
• Ensure it always reflects up and down momentum.
• Act 1 must always be on the downslope.
• Act 2 is partly up and partly down.
• Act 3 is always on the upslope.
• Right-brain thinkers are random-oriented and might enjoy the randomness of islands, so this helps them with structure.
• Always consider theme, voice, and pacing–they should be reflected on your storyboard.
• In your final edits, make sure the inner and outer story and dilemma are there.
• If your storyboard ever blocks your writing, go back to your brainstormed list of topics.
• Don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out at first. Just fill in what you know, and then fill in the rest as you go.
• Your storyboard should change and grow; a static storyboard will not serve your book. Like I mentioned before, new things come up, new characters might be introduced, etc., and you want to be able to accommodate. Storyboards are great for organization, so add new ideas as they come to you!
• Do. Not. Be. Afraid. Of. It! It might seem overwhelming, but you will probably find it to be more of a friend than a foe.

How do other authors plot their books? Some examples of what other people do (just to show you how different we all are), are:

• Betsy Dornbusch writes her tagline first, then the back cover blurb, then a whole synopsis.
• Travis Heerman uses Scrivener for plotting and composition, but then uses MS Word for editing.
• Mary Carroll Moore uses three different “W” storyboards–one before the first draft, one during revisions, and one during the final edit.
• Hilary Mantel has a 7-foot tall bulletin board filled with bits of dialogue, plot ideas, and descriptions, and once she’s found a way to use the pieces, she removes them from her board.
• Kazuo Ishiguro spends two whole years researching and then one whole year writing the book. He has giant binders with flow charts, including not only plots, but character sketches and memories. I would call these binders Book Bibles.

Lestat from Interview with the Vampire may have been talking about being a vampire when he said, “The dark gift is different for each of us,” but I like to think he was talking about us writers. That’s the gist of this here. If you take anything away from this, let it be the reminder that we all have our own methods to our madness. I just hope that I (with help from resources by other great authors) was able to shed light on some helpful tips.

So, what is your process?

The Journey Begins

For my first blog post, I thought I’d introduce myself. First of all, for those of you who don’t know, I am Jennie Ritz, formally known by the author name of Jennie Davenport. In the past, I had one novel published under that name: HEMLOCK VEILS, a paranormal romance that was a loose retelling of the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. To see my past blog posts/progress, visit my old, less-appealing site, jenniedavenportauthor.blogspot.com.

Right now, my project is a YA (young adult) paranormal romance. Sticking in line with the fairy-tale-retelling tradition, it’s a loose retelling of Rapunzel. What can I say–I love fairy tales and all things romance and magic. Currently, I’m in the revision process and my manuscript, titled THE GIRL MADE OF GOLD, is out with beta readers!

I’m a mother of three boys, I live in the best state around (Colorado), and I have an amazing partner by my side. Life has its ups and down, but those things always remain constant.

On this site, I will blog about all things writing, magic, and romance. Follow me for updates on my writing progress, writing snippets, news, and more!