6 Oct 2024, 05:26

This week, focusing on finding the armature for one of my stories helped me figure out how I needed to handle the stuff in the middle of the story.

I came up with this idea for a picture book about two years ago (when I was still a recently married woman by anyone's standard) based on a combination of pushing back on the "and they got married and lived happily ever after" ending, and a fragment of an Asian fairy tale I heard once where soulmates are connected by a red thread that is tied to both of their pinky fingers.

here is my original outline and my first "finished" draft

Well, I really did not and still do not like that draft. I wrote the ending as I walked into the writing group meeting so I would have something to show--but overall this just isn't it for lots of reasons. Since then I have written a lot of drafts, and I have struggled with the ending, how to handle the interactions with the characters in the middle, and what the main character's emotional experience is (and we aren't even going to talk about how I am avoiding thinking about how do illustrate a story with a blind guy as a main character.) The other reason it felt wrong (besides the ending feeling forced and unrealistic) was that every time I told the story to someone or read it or made a draft it felt like it dragged on! Something about the conflicts in the middle made them feel like the middle was way too long--the energy was not flowing right.

Wanna know why I have been struggling with this so much? I don't know what the story is about. I know everything that needs to happen, but I don't know the most important thing: WHY and TO WHAT END--That is armature guys...
and the story felt wrong because I was not using the rule of three correctly, so the audience was always confused and bored at the same time.

Well, after telling it so many times, and thinking about it, and digging into what was inspiring the story to begin with, and listening to various episodes of the story podcast and thinking about how the structure tips from their toolbox could be better applied in my story--and FINALLY figuring out the armature last week, I was able to solve each of these problems more or less, and I made another draft with an actual thought out ending.

here it is

What do you think? is there any part that is boring or confusing?
Im planning on doing it as a sort of longer children's book but in a graphic novel sort of format, so it would be a bit transformed and less on the nose perhaps.

What would you say the armature is? (please do say what you think)
thanks for following along in this journey thread

p.s. yes I did have to stop writing this post to write the actual draft I just linked here, start to finish. (cobbling it together and rewriting from scraps of previous drafts and a draft where I only wrote the ending--it is really helpful for me to isolate/compartmentalize bits of the problem and put them together later. it feels much less overwhelming) Having to share something is, like, the only way I actually get around to doing anything writing or art-related.