Day 1
Today, I’m supposed to be getting what Nik calls a
“plot-plan” constructed. Whew. I usually get an image of the first scene and an
idea of the last scene and then sit down and write from the seat of my pants.
But the ongoing exercise is profitable. Here’s what I found out.
Desired emotion (from the reader)
Abhorrence for violence and brutality to women.
Theme
Reward for some kinds of evil can only be death.
Main character’s emotional drive
Matt Stryker is a professional who does whatever is
necessary to bring criminals with a bounty on their heads to justice, dead or
alive.
Main character’s purpose
To do the job he’s been hired for, or must pursue due to circumstances, because it’s the right thing to do.
Possible causes of conflict
- weather
- geography
- opponents’ skills and/or cunning
- the need to help others
- pain
- wounds
- old enemies
- terrain
- the job
- the situation
Initial clash
- Stage station at Miller’s Well burned
- Stagecoach burned, horses, driver, shotgun rider, passengers
killed
- Molly Miller missing
(Stryker must decide whether to pursue the perpetrators in
hopes of rescuing Molly or to continue on his hunt for jailbreaker Loren
Blake.)
Dramatic high point
Standoff/shootout with three Dent sons (Stryker has killed
the father)
Additional conflicts
- Getting
Molly Miller back to her husband
- Quarrel
with Sheriff Bucknell in Tombstone, March 1883
- Face
off with Dirty Bill Cronen, a man always looking for a test
- Figuring
out the reasons for the Dents’ continual abuse of certain women
What the antagonists want
- Money
- Sex
- The
ability to “pull it off”
- Major
objective: abuse and disfigure every Yankee woman possible, leaving them breathing
and alive in a living hell (revenge for what happened to their own women when Sherman
marched to Georgia during the Civil War).
Final conflict
Stryker caught by Dents. Disarmed. Must watch as the Dents have
their way with another woman. Must find a way to get loose. Must use unusual
weapons to kill Dents one at a time. (Perhaps he kills the woman to put her out
of her misery, I don’t know yet. Or he allows her to kill herself.)
Good start, Charlie...
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