This blog has two parts:  one with a version of a plot exercise I wrote earlier and then one with that same plot exercise I wrote much later.  I wrote the blog thinking I’d only present one version.  But I ended up writing many versions, as I corresponded with friends, colleagues and strangers.  Tell me which version you like.

Part 1:

So, I’m beginning to develop a plot for my narrative.  This is a big step.  Up to now, I’ve just been writing out little sketches that get me into the character, the world and the situation.  This is fun.  But it’s amateur-hour-early-stage-anybody-can-do-this writing.  I just pick out whatever I think will be in the story.  I write it. And I trust that I will be able to fill in the space between scenes.

Rendering of a Climactic Plot

Now the strenuous work begins.  So I just wrote this exercise, which is something that one of my old writing instructors had me do and which I often make my students do:  a description of the world in a short paragraph.

Here’s mine:

Robert, a Vietnamese American Ivy-League graduate finds himself at 28 years of age in a rut: still grieving for his mysteriously murdered sister; alcoholic; unable to get past the 3^rd stage of AA; frittering away his potential in a dead end job as a delivery-man in LA’s fashion industry.   When someone starts killing the beautiful young interns that work at the most prominent independent design studios, Robert now must solve the case. He’s had an affair with one of these girls and he doesn’t want her case to wither on the vine like his sister’s.  With the help of his childhood friend Cesar, a beat cop who wants to make detective, Robert explores both the ugly and the glitzy side of fashion:  a world of beautiful people looking for perfection and a demi-monde of exploited labor working in sweatshops.  He uncovers a world of drugs, sadism, trickery.  And he unveils a Los Angeles—the gentrifying downtown scene, the third world conditions, the high rise lofts–hidden from the LA usually depicted in movies and television.

Writing something like this allows me to do two things:

1)   I get to hear how stupid this project is.

2)   I get to hold the idea of the story in the palm of my hands.

I’ll stick this at the beginning of a worksheet that I can use for plotting.  And I’m hoping that soon enough, I’ll have all the scenes mapped out.  The writing should come together faster.  So what do you think?  Rip me a new asshole and tell me what you think:  suggestions, praise, criticism.

Part 2:

That was the first draft but then I started telling people about it.  I’ve been doing that a lot and it’s forced me into a discipline:

The narrative follows a Vietnamese American (hapa) who works as a driver in the gritty underbelly of LA’s fashion industry. Beautiful young interns working for top designers are getting killed, their body’s mangled and arranged in disturbing tableaux among the body parts of mannequins. Robert–an alcoholic, ivy league has-been whose life has been put on hold after his own sister’s vicious murder–is sucked into the investigation.

This version is planed down.  It’s short.  I think shorter is better.  What do you think?