My Current WIP: His Plan for Me
Hello there. Welcome to Histories and Mysteries! And welcome back if you are a weekly follower! I just had the sudden urge to quote Obi-Wan/Old Ben, so there it is. Today's article marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. Last year, I primarily posted about books and blogging. This year, I have planned three articles about my writing. Next week and the last week of the month, I will be writing about my writing story.
I will began by giving a brief history of how I began writing this novel. You may see this repeated in an upcoming article. After I will include my synopsis and other important facts about the novel (genre, progress, temporary cover, etc.)
History
History: This novel was originally planned to precede the stories I was writing in my plays. I wrote a few plays (two I performed with my friends) about these secret agents who had a very bad issue with Russian double agents in their organization. These plays were inspired by a game my friends and I played in elementary called "Spy Mission." We would have code names (which was the best part about it) and try to capture each other's "bases" aka playground structures by having battles with all sorts of things, boomerangs, unloaded Nerf guns, plastic lightsabers, et cetera, and et cetera. Our imagination was amazing.At first, I decided to write a series of short stories to precede the secret agent stuff. I also decided that it would be a contemporary mystery because I loved mysteries and I didn't want to bother with writing a historical fiction secret agent thriller later. I could never imagine the setting being anything besides the modern day. Naturally, I decided to start with the second story I planned for the series. I have no idea why I decided to start with the second story, but I did. Not only did I have to write it, I also had to anticipate what happened in the first story. Please don't try this and make your life unnecessarily difficult.
I called this story "The Golden Gunslinger" and later "The Golden Bullet." I first wrote it completely in my notebook; then I typed the twelve page story on my laptop. Because I didn't really know what the first story would be like, this story does not line up with the novel I am writing now. The mystery was not much of a mystery either. The pictures above I made for an article in which I posted an excerpt from this story.
After that, I started working on the first story, entitled "The Secretary from Dallas." I'm pretty terrible at giving titles to anything if you were wondering. I started writing in my notebook and decided that I should type it because I was editing the story way too many times. At that point, the story became a novel. Halfway through the novel I reread it and renamed it The Lies We Believe. I made a draft cover which I don't have anymore.
By the end of the novel, I had written 45,000 words in a year (from November 2016 to November 2017) and renamed it His Plan for Me which is still the current name. I knew that the novel needed a lot of work so I started rewriting it after a little work on another novel. Then I started rewriting that draft, until I realized that my decision not the plan the novel whatsoever was not getting me anywhere with regards to the quality of the story. Now, I am going through the tedious work of planning everything out with hopes to start another draft later.
Specifics
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| Temporary Cover |
Synopsis: Carla moves to her back to Los Angeles after completing her college education. With her focus on her next step, she ignores her younger brother, Jeff. She learns to trust in God's will for her life and reconciles with her brother through the murder of his former classmate.
Title: His Plan for Me
Genre: Contemporary/Christian Fiction/Crime Fiction
Progress: Planning
Song: "Sovereign Over Us" by Michael W. Smith
To address some things: I am not allowed to have Pinterest, so I don't have a Pinterest Board to share. I did do a piece of aesthetics for one of my main characters, Karla. You can see that below this paragraph. The cover is a girl writing because one of my main characters, Karla, wants to become a published author. Besides I think that sweaters would totally be her style in the winter which is when my story takes place.
You might see that I have a pen name on the cover. That is because my real name is kind of confusing to say and spell. I thought of my pen name since my first name and middle name is Chinalyi (pronounced China + Lee) Jasmine. I wanted to keep the Chinese in my name so I chose to use Li instead of Lee which in my opinion looks a lot more Anglicized. That's why Li Jasmine is my pen name.
Excerpt
To close this article, I will include an excerpt from "The Golden Bullet." I would include some snippets from His Plan for Me, but I really don't know where that story will go. "The Golden Bullet" is done with. For reference, I changed the spelling of Karla's name from a C to a K in the new planning I'm doing. I wrote this story when I was thirteen and edited it once; it's really problematic. No verse or quote this week. Come back next week for Part 1 of "My Writing Story."
I’ve gone shopping. Be back soon.
Carla knew that “Be back soon” meant “I will spend less than five hours” to Dolly. Dolly usually spent all the money she made while shopping every Saturday morning. Last week, she returned at three p.m. with ten cents in her pocket. So she freshened up, made a quick breakfast, and curled up on a chair with a mystery novel.
***
It was nearly 11 pm when Dolly returned from shopping. She was carrying five huge bags full of clothes and shoes. “You wouldn’t believe what I got,” Dolly began.
“You wouldn’t believe what happened,” Carla said from the kitchen.
“I got this cute dress, and it looks just like the one Tanya Miller wore on the 56th day of 11th grade.”
Carla looked up from the bread that she was buttering. “Did you remember everyone’s outfit on every day of school?”
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