Story Planning

I've decided recently that occasionally my writing time should include planning, sketching sessions. This is one of them. An attempt to think through what I have on the table and where I might want to go with it.

Current story projects:
-The Blackest Blue
-Diablo
-The Inevitable Spree
-The Corso Essays
-Anoint
-Moira
-Young Love
-Sometimes Lonely Hearts

Recently I've been dealing with these under the auspices of variant authors. Charles Author stories are generally set in the fin de siècle or earlier and are written in a more elaborate and nostalgically older and verbose language. The Inevitable Spree and Diablo along with Anoint fall into this category.

With the exception of the Corso Essays, which are pretty much just my own essayistic rants, the other stories are Peter Blue stories. They're written by a 20 something man in the 90s and tend to be more slangy, full of cursing and generally youthful and rebellious. They are also a bit naive and that isn't really an affectation so much as a chance to let myself just roll with the silly childish things I want to write.

Currently it's all fairly poorly written, which also isn't an affectation and hopefully something that can be remedied.

The Blackest Blue is currently a plotless mess and needs to find some basic motivation. I have an angry character who is trying to have her identity literally exist only as a mass of stories. Her goal is to ride the edge of the stories in an expert surfing like capacity. I think this is lead story right now because it thinks through some of the coolness issues I'm trying to develop. Plotwise I think I need to get her into a lot of social settings where people can talk about her and she can tell stories or have stories told about her. Currently it is all made up on lies. What's the point of that I ask myself? It puts me into the position of having to have her defend the lies and makes it seem like she is running from something. And I really want her not to be running from something. Maybe plotting it this way is good because that's precisely the demon that dogs the story. How can she be making her life up out of lies and still be totally true to herself?

"I'm a liar if I'm anything at all. A good old fashioned con man."

Diablo has hit a sticking point too. I've set up a crazy complex set of characters and I really don't have a story yet. It's intended to be a picture of the Bay in that era first and foremost. It's also supposed to be about the interface between lies and reality, where hopes and dreams enter into the real world. Okay. Those are some thoughts. More to come.