Konrath, J.A. - DRACULAS (A Novel of Terror)

Paul, your first scene is Clayton arriving, looking for Shanna. They’ll be seeking each other out, and Clayton will be trying to control the situation and get outside reinforcements, while they work out their relationship problems. Their main antagonist will be Lanz in particular.

My story arc will start with Jenny defending pediatrics against the draculas, Benny in particular.

Blake’s story arc will be his pregnant couple, defending against Oasis in particular, while going through labor.

If we can each do about 7,000 words within our arcs, then we can bring them all together for the final showdown during the last quarter of the book.

After the Shanna and Oasis scenes, we’ll all go back to our separate folders.

Does this work for everyone?

Joe

• • •

We should probably each have a specific number of chapters to write in our separate arcs (4?) so that when the story is pieced together we can just go A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D.

Jeff

• • •

That depends on the length of each arc, and what’s happening in the rest of the story. It doesn’t have to be so strict with trading POVs.

As long as we all write fast-paced, short sections (a few pages each) with cliffhanger-type endings, we can pretty much cut and paste and make it work in a number of different ways. This really won’t be hard to put together. We got 15k words already, and they meshed seamlessly without too much forethought.

Joe

• • •

I’m having a hard time getting to the keyboard today (not home). I’m gonna add Shanna after Randall’s “sumbich” line. She’s going to wander into the hospital proper to the snack bar, then outside in front of the lobby. She’ll try to tell Clay over the phone but won’t. She owes him a face-to-face. I like the irony of Clay thinking this girl is crazy about him - he knows it’s the guns.

Paul

August 22, 2010

All - Draculas 1.6 is now up with Paul’s excellent new Shanna section. I’ve moved the 1.5 and Paul’s conflicted 1.5 over (saving it in case Paul did anything else beyond the Shanna section). Let’s all stay out of 1.6 for now and go nuts on our separate sections. Great job, all. These 1st 17,000 words really sing.

Blake

• • •

JEFF 2.0, wherein Randall and Jenny make it to pediatrics, is up on Dropbox.

Jeff

• • •

Nicely done. I laughed twice, and great action.

Two suggestions:

“Jenny pushed open a door marked “Pediatrics.” So that’s how it’s spelled, Randall thought.”

Also, Jenny shouldn’t want him to go after Mortimer, and should say so. First, she doesn’t want him to leave her. Second, she doesn’t want him to put himself in danger. This scene could be drawn out for some drama, and perhaps they should come very close to kissing. We want to feel that their love, which has always been there, is still strong. They should both feel reluctant, and nervous, and confused, and frightened at the thought of losing each other. After all, they won’t see each other again for a few thousand words.

This is a perfect time to actually make the reader feel about the characters, and it should only take a paragraph. If you’re sick of writing the scene, lemme know and I’ll take a shot at it.

Joe

• • •

I dunno…I feel like the whole “Randall goes after Mortimer” is already stretching suspension of disbelief almost to the breaking point. Randall is dumb and ridiculously impulsive, but leaving the woman he loves behind along with a bunch of innocent children so he can chase after Mortimer is really pushing it. If she’s confused and disoriented and it happens quickly, I can see Randall thinking later “Wow, I really shouldn’t have done that,” but if she’s begging him to stay, I feel like Randall is becoming borderline retarded.

There are plenty of other ways I can handle the scene (Mortimer could be chasing after a kid), but I don’t think the reader will stick with Randall if Jenny asks him not to abandon her.

Jeff

• • •

Just read the scene, have to agree with Jeff. It’s a stupid thing to do to leave those kids, even for Randall. figure out some way to MAKE Randall have to leave, and I think having a child freaked out, and run out of pediatrics and Randall have to go get him might be the way. Then Randall can get stuck, trapped, lost, whatever. Okay, I can’t even spell pediatrics.

Blake

• • •

You guys are right.

How about he doesn’t go after anyone? Let me write a scene where they’re together, barricading pediatrics, and then have a kid run off.

Joe

• • •

That works. I think we were trying to separate the characters too early to get us on our separate arcs. Having a kid run off during the barricading process works much better than a random Mortimer sighting. When Joe is done, I’ll rework the end of my scene to match the beginning of his scene.

Jeff

• • •

Yeah, Jeff, I think you can probably go ahead and start into Randall going after the kid. This sounds great. Loved the scene you just wrote by the way, other than the motivation issues. Excellent dracula head-lopping off action.

Blake

• • •

Okay. I’m back. Just spent 4 hours on the goddamn road.

No, I did nothing to the Dracula 1.5 file.

I’m readying to bring Clay into the picture. Here’s the way I see Clay: Randall thinks that without his badge and gun Clay is nothing, but he’s wrong. He’s one of the good guys. He believes in loyalty and honor and will not back down from a commitment. I see him bitten by a dracula toward the end. He will not allow himself to become one of them. So I see him luring a bunch of them into one of the sun rooms or a large staff meeting room, and setting off one (or maybe a couple) of his high-explosive 40mm grenades, taking them all with him.

Is this okay with everybody?

Paul

• • •

Sounds good, Paul. Lanz will be your main antag, right?

Joe

• • •

Haven’t thought of a main antag for Clay. Randall should hate Lanz’s guts since he got Jenny fired. And Lanz hates Jenny.

Clay hates them all. They’re vermin. He’s the Order half of Law & Order and these draculas are radically offensive.

Paul

• • •

Totally down with it. Can’t wait to read!

Blake

• • •

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat

Just thinking here on ways to continue to make our monsters interesting…since we’re basing our draculas more on biology than supernature (word?), what if our draculas exhibit a few creepy characteristics of the real vampire bats…they don’t suck blood, their saliva contains an anticoagulant which stops blood from clotting and prolongs bleeding and they lap up the flow (I already made Oasis’ tongue a sponge). Maybe this doesn’t matter if our draculas are ripping heads off and disemboweling their prey. Also, what if our draculas, along with their keen sense of smell, hunt by sonar, emitting a low-energy sound pulse…they could make some disturbing sound and our characters (maybe my biology-teacher pregnant mother) could speculate on what’s going on, and find ways to combat it.

Blake

• • •

When are we losing it? And is Lanz going to cut it? Obviously there’s going to be some backup system, but can that be taken out too? Are we going completely dark, limited lighting?

Blake

August 24, 2010

I’m only attaching this because I won’t have access to Dropbox until late tonight, and I’m not sure how it will impact what Joe is writing.