The spine

I figured out the spine of the story while washing the dishes tonight. And talking to myself, obviously! Every so often I'd go make sure the puppy was still licking peanut butter out of his Kong toy and then go back to the washing and talking.

I'm especially in love with this story now because it's an awesome twist on the most common YA story. I'm sure it'll develop more between now and NaNo, like with actual story beats and such, but it just went from this:

beginning -- stuff happens -- awesome transformation has occurred!

to this:

beginning -- event, which causes -- event, which causes -- event (and so on) -- and awesome transformation occurs!

I used to draw this simplistic story diagram on the board in screenwriting classes at the beginning of the semester. Stick figure person here. Donut over there. OBSTACLES IN BETWEEN.

Absurd but it works. Except it's external. But you need external for internal! You need both! That just made me realize that I need to work much more on the internal because the external is kind of driving the internal change and that bothers me. It should be the other way around. Maybe external irritates and motivates the internal change that makes it so you can achieve the external, know what I mean?

Anyway. Building it up. Excellent character. Thing she wants. Learning all this crazy stuff to get what she wants, except that drastically changes how she sees it and whether she wants it at all. In the end she wants the same thing in a totally different way and gets it for completely new reasons. I know!