Pacing and Maggie Toussiant (discontinuation of the 50-day blitz)

Last night was our monthly local Sisters in Crime meeting and our guest was author Maggie Toussiant. She talked about pacing your scenes, chapters and books and how to catch some of those pesky pacing problems. We also had an interactive session where she gave us two characters and we provided a little bit of background information and then we formed several small groups and had to come up with a scene - either a fast paced action, slow paced action or fast paced dialogue or slow paced dialogue. Interesting what happens with the same background information, how each group came up with different scenarios. A fun exercise in pacing.

Anita rode with me to the meeting and as usual I was the talker all the way home. I did a little brainstorming about Imogene's story thinking about the pacing of the story. So far, the three pages I've written are slow paced, narrative, not much action but fitting for where the story starts. I know the prologue will disappear because I've got the scene in my head and unsure if I've put it down on the paper yet as to when the secret comes out. I don't know if I can pull off a slow-paced beginning with a faster-paced majority of the story or not but I'm going to try. One thing that did come from the brainstorming session with Anita is that I believe this story will call for a "postlogue", not so much an epilogue but more of an "author's note" explaining certain elements in the story. Don't worry it won't be long - a couple of paragraphs at the most and will be something to the effect of: This is truly a work of fiction because after my many hours of research and the findings of historical data and other information would not make this story happen in such a way. (I know it needs some work and there will be a little more to it than that but you get the gist of the meaning - Imogene is pure fiction and there are no facts to really base much of the story on other than possible places in a different time from when the story takes place.)

I'm discontinuing my 50-day giveaway blitz as I've had only three comments (six actual but only three answered the question) on the first day and I've tried to go to my social groups and post everywhere to stop by my blog and leave a comment to be entered for whatever the day's giveaway is. Since it seems no one is interested in leaving comments, it isn't worth my time to put out there my time or effort to get readers and followers and folks who will at least just leave a comment in order to try to win whatever I may be giving away on any given day. I'll go back to my posting schedule as before - Mondays and Thursdays with guest bloggers the 4th week of the month and an occasional review of books I've read on my kindle.

The end of this month, Jen Wylie and Darcia Helle as well as Jo Linsdell are my guest bloggers and there will be free ebooks during Jen's and Darcia's days. Jo will be a guest on my blog two more times as part of her 3-month blog tour and a free ebook will be given away on her last appearance. I will probably do some occasional giveaways during the next couple of months. I haven't really decided.

I hope you all will still at least read my blog and see what I have to say. See you all in the postings - E :)