Young Writers Society

I have a very loose hold on what I even want this story to be about and I'm definitely functioning on having absolutely no planning before hand.

Well, I wanted to go with absolutely no planning but I decided to do some work with PlanMo, so there will be a few things accounted for.

2. Have a think about your opening scene. Write about what plot points will be hit and what information will be shared in your first scene, or first scene that you consider to be important.

Part 1 - Legit Opening Scene
My opening scene starts with the main main character "Jane Smith", waking up in a hut to the flood that's passing over the crop fields. "Jimmy Sabbato" is the engineer and he runs to her to say the flood gates on the dam can't be controlled for the one field. The commotion from the lightning storm always wakes "Z", the medical officer, who comes to tell them the storm damaged the communications base.

Part 2 - Explanations for the Scene
The opening scene is set five years before the real beginning of the story and it's about the first flood the base officers experienced on planet Z - 49078. At this point, they were all sent out there for different reasons, promised different things but in general they had pissed someone off.

They weren't prepared for the flood and once it's partially controlled, there's a discovery over the fact the Federation knew how hard it was to live on this planet.
And it's an issue because they didn't tell anyone.
And a further issue because they're trying to send all of the experimental home units there.

This scene is rather important but I was still on the fence about including it because of how corrupted it makes the story sound. The premise of this story is light space comedy with plant science but for me, it holds some of the origins of sci-fi used to present things on the home world. Star Trek TOS was a really big fan of it and brought the usage of sci-fi for political issues into a much larger market, which may or may not have been apparent before.

Part 3 - Further Explanation of the Planet
So the environment is okay -ish. Humans and most humanoids can walk upon this planet with no need for oxygen tanks. And they brought some crops with them, even though there were cultivated crops on the planet, to make these hybrids. there's also a lot of animals that can be hunted and/or domesticated, so the planet does hold some of the miracle values.

But again, this scene is introducing all the troubles of the planet. And how there's extreme weather conditions. And weird animals that they can't control. And a criminal underworld.

So when the setting is introduced, I find myself describing Florida.

Part 4 - Character Meaning
These characters represent different things to me and they represent different things within the plot.
Jane Smith is of course the character that I model after myself.
Jimmy is modeled after a couple of friends of mine.
Z is the ambiguous doctor in the healthcare system who made a misstep and was covered up quickly.
And the character not to be introduced yet (for another five years), is an overall summary of the characters' troubles.

First Day Summary:
1667 words written
- opening scene has changed, pushed back by a year and onto a different planet
- main character introduced as well as some side characters who show up again later
- setup done for introduction of second main character

Favorite line:

“Well shit.”
Jane rolled over the top of the bar, clutching the crowbar in one hand and a broken bottle of whiskey in the other.

Day 6

- 10,000 word goal is hit
- first 3 main characters introduced
- all the drama introduced
- there was a wedding
- and tomatoes
- it's going pretty okay