A Spy's Got To Have a Game Plan

I've been busy playing around with the first four chapters of my SSS (Super Soldier Spy), Book 1. :coughprocrastinationcough: I've been tinkling with the beginning of each chapter, seeing how I could insert a short one or two paragraphs of Hell's previous training in italics.

Here is the problem. I tend to just start a story right in the middle (haven't you noticed? LOL). There's very little set up. Marlena Maxwell in Into Danger walking into the bar--all the information reader gets is what Steve gets, and very little else. And Nikki Harden in Facing Fear walking into Rick's life. She thinks of her "other life" in third person, so I projected that in both her and Rick's thoughts.

In other words, I tend to work backwards, then forward it again somewhere after the middle of the book. It's a pattern I have no control over because--yes, it's that awful admission again--I don't plot. I just write and hope to discover the secrets along with the readers.

In the five books I've written for Avon Books, I usually have a single theme in my head as guidance. For example, Into Danger is all about the surface. The sexiness, the characters' outward beauty, the way things appear are played up to the point that readers have to read between the lines to see what's happening and understand the characters' own different motivations. There is a lot of outward movement and action to hide what's going on inside.

On the other hand, Facing Fear is all about internal drama and taboo. I had to slow the pacing of the book down because the characters' lives were basically frozen. Redemption is a slow process; you can't make a man horribly wrong in the beginning and then he's a good guy again by chapter three. All this is also reflected by the government departmental investigation process--red tape and bureaucrats with each repetitive level. The pacing only picks up at the end of the novel when Rick finally goes into action.

With Hell in SSS, I have a slight problem, to say the least. In the beginning, Hell is the already the winning candidate of the SSS competition among the agencies. She's COMCEN's offering (through GEM) and she's, obviously, COMCEN's toy as well as the curiosity on display for all the agencies.

The rules I've set this time is more "plot-like" (arrghhhhh) because a three-book arc of the same characters is a fairly complicated process and so there's got to be some rules. The first one is that Hell is among a small number of candidates (each agency has one) and they are all trained by each agency at a certain skill to a certain level. So, let's say, she spent half a year training with a few operatives from Special Forces, learning things and being graded while another candidate spent some time learning COMCEN specialties. Then she spent three months with the CIA to get a hang of their kind of covert field work. All in all, each SSS candidate has had two years of training before the winner's announced. Thus, the title Super Soldier Spy.

All this is the background information because Hell's story began with her already as the winner, and she is now in COMCEN going for the ultimate challenge, the test that all the agencies had wanted their candidates to be doing. Have I lost you yet? I told you this is a complicated plot.

It's ONLY complicated because of the back story, really. Because the beginning is really simple. It goes like this:

Prologue:
1) The Man Who Will Be Hell's COMCEN Trainer is deciding whether he wants to be Hell's ComCen trainer. He sets up a test.
2) Hell is tested and of course, passes.
Chapter One:
1) Hell wonders about the identity of her Trainer. It's been a month (two?) and he's still anonymous. (At this time I won't how her training is done).
2) Hell finally meets with her Trainer--sort of.

Simple and straightforward, right? But in between all this simplicity and straightforwardness, I have to info-dump about WHY Hell was chosen and how she won the "competition."

My new publisher, MIRA, won me over the other bids because the buying editor "got" what I was trying to do with my story. Two of the bidders thought my concept too scifi because there are so many cutting edge experimental stuff. One editor loved the story but wanted me to start EARLIER, with a whole thing about Hell's training ala Demi Moore in that SEAL movie. (Again, it's the Gennita Low tendency of starting in the middle of a story thing here) I was okay with that idea but not totally keen because I really didn't want to write a book on training a tough woman. This book is about a woman with a few very special skills already, who's going to be going through a bunch of questionable government experiments, like putting the newly developed drug that makes a soldier less in need of sleep and emotions in her body.

My main focus and interest is: Why the hell would a woman (or a man) want to do that to her body? What's her motivation? And finally, what's going to happen when she goes through these experiments? Will she really be less emotional? Then what? So many kewl things that I'd rather explore than "okay, watch the Demi Moore-heroine battle through her SEAL exercises....

Nonetheless, an editor's concerns are always with merit. Her job is to make sure my story doesn't lose the reader from the beginning. So I've been playing with these starting chapters, wondering how to info-dump without being too info-dumpy. Info-dumpy is when your eyes start glazing over after 20 pages of Clancy suddenly cutting in a scene when a plane is about to blow up and start telling you how exactly a bomb is made from what materials and how these materials were collected together. ;-)

So, my final solution--one or two paragraphs in italics, using an omniscient second person voice that follows an exercise/test/skill that Hell was doing in those two years of training and then the following chapter will echo this skill/exercise/test in a more sophisticated way (because Hell is two years more trained now).

Yes? I'm insane, I know. It would be just so much easier to make my hero the Super Soldier Spy and just goes on a mission ;-). But noooooo...

Oh, and the prevailing theme that I keep in mind as I write: Greek mythology. Such as Hades and Hell. And also Cupid and Psyche. And that's all the hints you're going to get!

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