Nine Characters + One Butterfly = Chaos Theory
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Most of the posts you’ve seen in this blog so far are replications of earlier posts from my former blog and/or personal website. There will be more of those, but this post is current (3-31-2021), and marks the start of a once every other week posting in the blog. I’m at a crucial stage in …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on December 10, 2013 The Plot Thickens (A Little) In the last post I established that I thought my cast of characters was complete, but was it? They were all lined up neatly on the butterfly’s route (a teacher in Canada, a rock deejay in Virginia, a scientist …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on December 7, 2013 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] Okay, by this time I had six main characters (a lot to juggle, I know), but with NaNoWriMo just weeks away at this point, my biggest worry was finding a way …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on December 3, 2013 More Decisions In the last post, I talked about the idea of constructing the plot of If a Butterfly around a Monarch butterfly, on its annual migration from Canada to Mexico, interacting with characters who happened to be in its path. The original idea …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on November 30, 2013 Decisions, Decisions In the previous post, I talked about how the idea for If a Butterfly originally formed. It was early-fall 2003, and I had been trying to develop a plot idea for NaNoWriMo, which was then about two months away. I had a …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on November 26, 2013 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] The Very Beginning If a Butterfly was the first novel I finished. ** I started it in November of 2003, and didn’t finish it until October of 2012. This doesn’t mean …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on October 24, 2012 Although If a Butterfly went through many revisions before it was complete, it shrank and grew as I worked. It was at its heftiest (in terms of size) in March/April 2012. At that point it weighed in at 311,032 words, and was 1,151 double-spaced …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on September 15, 2012 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] When I finished the second draft of If a Butterfly, about eleven weeks ago [early-summer 2012], it was 280,762 words and 1,093 double-spaced pages. After I returned from the 2012 WLT …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on July 25, 2012 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] For the past year or so people have been asking, “How’s your book coming?” referring to my novel. If a Butterfly. I had usually been telling them that the first draft …
Originally posted on Michael Runs the Gamut on July 21, 2012 [Comments from 2021 are in italics, enclosed in square brackets, like this one.] During the past two years [2011 to 2012], because I thought my novel, If a Butterfly, was nearing completion [silly me], I started writing (and practicing) pitches for it. I wanted …