About the Author
Miranda Parker is the author of the Evangeline Crawford Bounty Hunter Series. After graduating from college, she began working as a features editor for various magazines and spent many years as a publicist for national recording artists, actors, ministers, and authors. However, writing fun, feisty, redemptive bad girl gone good stories is her passion. She resides with her family in Georgia near a horse ranch and her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop. On a perfect day she can be found curled up with a good book or in a movie theater with a bucket of popcorn.
Visit the author online at http://www.mirandaparker.com/.
Literary Gumbo
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Advice for the Aspiring Writer from Miranda Parker
Gathering the Skeletons of a Publishable story- My 8 Point Plot Structure:
A Good Excuse to Be Bad was born out of a year- long writing workshop hosted by Chuck Palahniuk five years ago. At the time Fight Club, the movie had become a cult classic. I wondered if the novel was better. After reading the first sentence I was hooked. The way he told stories fit my aesthetic. I had been a reviewer and book judge for years and had become jaded by the stories that were piling up in my review file. If I was going to be a writer, I wanted to bring something different and good to the table. So when this opportunity fell into my lap I took it. And boy did I learn tons.
Today I will share the Skeletons of a Publishable Story (Your Plot.)
What is that? Your story has to have a structure else it’s a series of vignettes. There needs to be a beginning, middle and end, because it’s a human nature thing. We like a story to have clear demarcations. Rambling throws us off. So having a strong foundation for the story will ground the reader and they will trust whatever you give them, because the story feels familiar.
My Story Skeleton consists of 8 points:
- The Beginning:
- How is life before the ball drops?
- 2. The Inciting Incident:
- The ball dropped.
- What is it? (someone new in their lives, a tragedy, something that changes their normal world)
- The Decision:
- Your main character’s goal is to return things back to normal.
- What will your main character think she should do to accomplish that?
- The Journey:
- Now that your heroine has made a decision what will happen to her on her way to getting back to normal? Depending on the genre certain things should happen here.
- 5. The Realization and New Decision
- While on this journey back to normal she will discover that her first problem isn’t the real problem. In fact, the problem is bigger than she thought.
- However, she also realizes that she’s the only one who can fix this problem.
- Others will lose if she doesn’t get things back to normal.
- The Journey gets deeper.
- The Black Moment/The Climax
- She hits a roadblock that she has been dreading since the ball dropped.
- She realizes that normal may not be reached.
- She also learns that it is her fault if it doesn’t get reached, but she can’t turn back now.
- She has to face the Big Problem by herself.
- 7. The Reversal.
- This is optional, but makes a better book in my opinion.
- The best example I can give is Rocky 3 when Rocky was losing to the Russian, but he had so much heart the Russian audience began to chant his name, which gave him the strength to keep fighting.
- 8. The Conclusion and Resolution
- We have a new normal and all ends are tied. The Journey ends.
About the Book
Smart gorgeous and too tough for her own good, bail recovery agent and single mom Evangeline Crawford moved to the burbs for a quiet life. Fortunately, it’s not turning out that way…
Angel has to admit she’s feeling restless. The only excitement in her life is her schoolgirl crush on the town’s new pastor, Justus-too-Hot-to-be-Holy Morgan. But a fateful encounter and a job gone wrong at Club Night Candy in Underground Atlanta is about to change all that…Soon, Angel’s trying to save her divazilla twin sister from her big mouth and a scandalous murder charge, and probing a church cover-up–with none other than Justus by her side. But Angel has one more pressing concern; will Bella be ready for kindergarten? Only time will tell for this bad girl gone good whose days are once again far from boring–and hopefully far from numbered…
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For More Information
Visit the author online at http://www.mirandaparker.com/.
Visit blog tour schedule at http://bit.ly/AGoodExcuseToBeBadBlogTour
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