April 2019: Which Comes First
~ Marie Dry ~

CTR asked:

Which comes first when you start a new story? The title? The characters’ names? The plot? Explain your starting process and what you need before you can write the first words.

Marie Dry said:

Definitely the characters. Before I even know what will happen in the story I need to know who my hero and heroine is. What makes them laugh and what makes them cry. It takes me a while to really know them, and especially to know what drives them.

First I get a glimpse of my characters in everyday life. Most of the times it’s something that makes me giggle at inappropriate times. Mostly its the heroine that I see first. From there I start to see more and more of them and as soon as I know what they want and see the first interaction with the hero I am ready for the next step.

At this stage I do a character development. I have these questions I answer which helps me get to know them and to focus on the things that will allow the character to drive the story forward. Their desperate desire, lies they tell themselves, truths they are hiding from the world, what they think they want and what they really want. When I have done this its on to the next step.

Now I start writing and I just put down whatever comes into my mind. I let the characters do the talking. Normally about a quarter in I either see the story is working or I find I don’t know my characters well enough. When the story runs out of steam I go back to my character development and dig deeper. I brainstorm until I know the character inside and out. Having written a partial rough draft, I know what I need to make the characters drive the story.

This is a dirty draft and not fit for anyone to see. When I am done with it I print it out and then make a monkey puzzle with it. I write out of sequence so I cut and paste and decide what happens when. After this step I go through it by hand and add and delete what I need.

Now I type the whole manuscript over and I have my second rough draft. I do a third rough draft and then I do three edits.

– Website – http://mariedry.com
– Twitter – @MarieDry1

Dawn of the Cyborg

[Science Fiction Romance]

On a future earth, Aurora has been desperately searching for her long-lost sister, when she is sacrificed to Balthazar, leader of the fearsome Cyborgs who invaded earth. Now she is stuck on an alien spaceship with a crazy Cyborg who thinks she can give him a soul and who has a weird fixation with the way she moves. Aurora is desperate to return to earth to search for her sister while the President of United Earth insists that only she can save Earth from enslavement by the cyborgs. After spending time with the cyborgs, Aurora realizes that the machine she thought would be easy to betray, the machine she has to betray, if she ever wants to rescue her sister from enslavement, has turned into a man she could come to love.

Available in Ebook:

More Authors Dish about which comes first.

https://coffeethoughts.coffeetimeromance.com/ad2019-apr-comesfirst/