As promised – The rest of Part 1

Those are the classic, three act, big picture ideas. Here are some extra details. Every television program and most books start with a hook. On tv, they don’t want you to change the channel. So, before the first commercial, they grab you with some major incident that it will take the rest of the program to resolve. In Star Wars, the Princess is taken by Vader and the droids escape with a mysterious item given to the droid, R2D2, by the Princess. In a book, the author wants you to read that first paragraph or back cover and simply have to know what’s next. It is the first call to the reader of my goal I call Turn the Page. For me, I call this opening hook Act 0. It is the setup. Some authors refer to it as the inciting incident. It’s what drives the characters and the reader forward. For the opening scene in my book, Kal & Julie, Julie leaves the high school reunion to discover Kal is being pinned in the parking lot by Julie’s husband. In Ozark Puzzlement, the Sheriff discovers a dead body in a car floating three feet off the ground. Act 0 gives you a few more words. That is one of the reasons why I start with the low end of the word counts by genre. I will fill in words with some extras like this Act 0.

Then after the big finish of Act 3, I put in another extra, Act 4. It ties everything together in a bow, resolves any outstanding issues, says what happened to any characters injured or missing during the final climax in Act 3. For me in my happy-ever-after universe, it is the sigh of relief, life continues ending. It doesn’t necessarily mean champagne and roses. They’re still humans with issues but they got through the trials of the book, maybe with a limp, but through. At the end of Ozark Puzzlement, I then added a final teaser after Act 4 that segues between Ozark Puzzlement and the next book, Ozark Trouble. I do want readers to want to get to the next book in the series! Just watching that word odometer click higher with a smile on my face.

Here’s a look at the word counts needed for each of the three Acts for each genre. Don’t sit down to type just yet. I combined Romance in with the Thriller/ Horror/ Mystery/ Crime genres not out of a perverse sense of humor but because they have the same total word counts!

Table 2: Words Needed per Act for Each Genre

	Acts	Total
Genre	1	2	3
Romance -or- Thriller/Horror Mystery/Crime	17,500	25,900	26,600	70,000
Sub-genre Romance	10,000	14,800	15,200	40,000
Sci-fi/ Fantasy	22,500	33,300	34,200	90,000
Mystery/Crime	20,000	29,600	30,400	80,000
Young Adult	12,500	18,500	19.000	50,000
Act Percent of Total	25%	37%	38%

And you’re waiting to see how to break the Acts down into something your fingers and keyboard can get leverage on. You knew there was more coming, clever human. Fear not. This was Part 1 of the plan. Read on, intrepid hero. The final part of our plan awaits.

P.S. In case you’re wondering why I talk about books I write and insert examples of my writing, it is not because I am a friggin narcissist or think they are the absotively best you could read. Don’t get me wrong. I think they are good samples, and you can find tons more in your favorite books or by searching the internet. I use mine for two reasons. First, I am sitting here with my computer in my lap and all my writing handily available a mere cut and paste away from this document. Easy-peasy. Besides, I know exactly how the subject of a given section relates to something I’ve written. Second major reason, I only have to ask the mirror for copyright permissions. No legal hassles. I wrote it. I can use it. Simple and clean. Not going to sue myself.

Another P.S. Just can’t stop writing…

In case you’re wondering why the delay in getting this out I was editing two books. One you may find of particular interest is in the hands of Amazon’s review board. It is so cleverly called Writing Your Book : I Did – You Can!. I suppose you can guess the topic.

More coming soon, friends.