Having made progress on "Seer Tyro Fiend" after my stuck period, I find my attention starting to stray a bit. Some ideas about the other book I had started working on have intruded and tease me with inspiration. I'm starting to get a better vision of it now, maybe moving it into the not-too-distant future which would be an extrapolation from our society today and projecting it into the future. Whew! Sounds grandiose. And complicated. It will take more time to fully envision this, so I guess I'm not really ready to jump back into writing that one yet.
Back to "Seer," however. The next step is to work out the sequence of events. As I consider the things that have to happen, it seems I can't settle on the order for them. (Ha! says the Voice of Organization. Should have made an outline!) A minor character is the first link in a chain and a confrontation is required, but if it occurs too early, I have to assume that person will take steps to minimize damage and protect the rest of the mystery. I may have to revert to a method of mine which is as close as I ever get to writing an outline. I start summarizing events and scenes, not unlike writing a synopsis, as a list. It helps to organize the ideas and then look at the total picture more clearly. This sort of summarizing has helped in the past and sometimes resulted in more restructuring as I come up with ways to improve upon what I've already written.
On a side note, it's really difficult to talk about the writing process without introducing spoilers of the novel I'm working on. While a more precise definition of the issue at had would come from clearly stating what I'm wrestling with, I don't want to give away the plot or the major scenes ahead of time. I think this springs from a fear of potential readers being turned off or thinking that once they know what's in the book, there's no reason to read it. And I sure don't want to lose potential readers before the book even gets published!
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