Outlining!

I think I've found a vector artist who will be perfect to do a cover for "The Serial," and I can afford her current prices. So I threw myself into outlining today, so I could have a sense of what I want for the cover.

And the posts I've been writing on supporting police characters has helped sharpen my image of the series. I was having trouble with my central character - Lady Pauline. She needs to be one of those slightly too perfect characters, like The Saint or Sherlock Holmes. She's also going to be young and a little foolish, but her sheer chutzpah makes up for it.

But Pauline is going to have a nemesis in Detective Constable MacGreevey - a man who is definitely the hero of his own story. He's one part Marshal Gerard, one part Wiley Coyote, and maybe a smidgen of Gromit (if Gromit had no patience whatsoever for his boss Wallace - which is why MacG is still just a detective constable).

I mentioned yesterday that the nemesis character has to be at least as strong as the protagonist. Well, it also works the other way. The heroine can become more interesting if she gets a boost from an interesting foil. It also helped when I realized that Pauline's sidekick, Lily, is not her secretary nor paid companion, nor even originally a friend - she's a young wannabe journalist that Pauline has hired to chronicle her adventures. The fact that Lily is a little more detached allows for another level of minor conflict.

And once Pauline filled out, I was able to figure out how the romantic interest enters the story.

So, much progress today, even if it wasn't the progress I planned.