With my first novel being sent out for Beta reads. I’ve decided to move up the start of my next YA series: SOUL STONES. This will be a rather challenging project for me because of the restricted word count and a change in point of view, which will require me to basically relearn the novel writing process, but I’m up for it.
Here’s a bit about the project for curious minds:
Souls Stones: CURE
Becca Moreno, a Fifteen year old loner, and Rachel, a powerful deity on the run, were both looking for an escape. They thought they would find it at a local rave, but wound up finding each other instead. Now their souls are bound to one body, while their hearts belong to two different guys. Matters of the heart may be something they can work at, but the secret Rachel’s keeping could destroy them all.
Since this process is new to me and pose’s a number of challenges I thought I’d document the process from beginning to end to show how my Blossoming mind works.
So just to catch you up on what I’ve done so far:
Step 1: The Idea
The idea for SOUL STONES came from the image of a girl, which turned out to Becca taking a pill for the first time. It was the only image I saw for a long time, but it intrigued me from that moment. I was In the middle of writing my first novel and knew I didn’t have the time to commit to it, so I wrote the details of the scene down, added it to my development list and went on with my life.
Step 2: The summary
About a week before finishing my second novel I sat down to write out the series, YES THE SERIES, not just the first book. I had to be certain that I had a story that was gripping with an arch that expanded multiple books. I ended up with a 16 page summary of the first four books, and later wrote a short summary for a fifth.
Step 3: Research
One of the elements that stood out in the summary was a big scene involving a subway so I had to research places I knew a subway existed. Since there are like a thousand books written about New York, I quickly scratched that one off the list, Los Angeles as well since it’s the setting for my first YA series and then it came to me, Chicago has the L-Train. It was the perfect urban and contemporary area to set my story, the only problem, I had never been there. So I enlisted Google Earth to take a tour of some of the neighborhoods. And within hours I had a city, school, and neighborhood to build my story around.
Step 4: Development
- Character development is fun. I have a 10 page psychological profile I do for my MC’s.
- A Scene outline is also a life saver when I’m setting up a writing schedule. It also helps me gauge the size of my novel based on the number of scenes. I still use my screenwriting techniques. Limiting each scene to three pages, but for this project that’s kind of going out the window.
- POV I’ve made my list of characters and who’s POV will be featured in the series
- Query once I have my summary complete I like to go ahead and write my query and logline. It’s really a selling tool for me to keep at it.
- Mock Cover this is the only thing I’m missing for the project at the moment. It’s also a motivation for me. I can visualize the end result.
Step 5: Writing
My current step in the process. Today is day two and I’ve already written the first 30 pages.
