Almost two months ago I posted the first scene of my work in progress, a dark psychological thriller I’ve titled THE BEDWETTER. It’s about an abused young man with chronic secondary nocturnal enuresis who, as pressures mount, embarks on a killing spree using the tools of his dark fantasies.
I tracked my daily writing milestones with nightly Facebook page updates, and posted a progress report two weeks ago.
I finished ahead of schedule, completing the first draft the evening of April 4, 2013, at a total of 51,167 words—very close to my revised goal of 52,500. I was ecstatic! Since the beginning of 2013, I’d been spending two hours almost every weekday evening, and three to six hours on Saturdays and Sundays, plotting and writing. My all-time daily writing record was 2528 words on 3/26; my weekend writing record was 5024 words on 3/29-31; my daily average came out to be 1339/day.
I forced myself to let it cool for a week (well, almost a week) while I worked on getting DEATH PERCEPTION ready for release (next month). Today I exported THE BEDWETTER Scrivener project to a Word file and printed out the entire draft: 241 pages. I will begin my read-through tonight, making notes in the margin. Here’s a peek at the first draft. 🙂

I’ll keep you updated on my progress. In the meantime, drop me a line!
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A month ago I posted the first scene of my work in progress, a dark psychological thriller I’ve titled THE BEDWETTER. It’s about an abused young man with chronic secondary nocturnal enuresis who, as pressures mount, embarks on a killing spree using the tools of his dark fantasies.
I’ve started to keep track of my writing progress and wanted to update you in a more comprehensive way than my daily Facebook status updates and tweets.
Idea Development in THE BEDWETTER
I originally received inspiration during some time off I took at the end of last year. I got the idea about a young man being punished in a horrifying way for wetting the bed. I used those two weeks to formulate a big-picture plan for the story, filling out plot and character questionnaires, just getting to know the story.
From that point on, I began to hear this character’s voice and was often interrupted by creative “downloads” of information that I would later work into scenes and dialogue.
Plotting of THE BEDWETTER in Truby’s Blockbuster 6
I spent all of January and the first half of February doing more detailed plotting using John Truby’s screenplay development software, Blockbuster 6. The application leaves a lot to be desired, but it enabled me to draft a list of scenes and arrange them in the right order. Then, I fleshed out each scene, answering questions such as:
- My challenge in writing this scene
- My strategy for writing this scene
- The scene goal (POV character’s desire)
- The character’s plan to achieve the goal
- The opponent in the scene
- The scene’s conflict
- Any twist revealed
- The scene’s moral argument (value A vs. value B)
Blockbuster 6 also enables you to include the structures of up the three genres in your story (for example, horror, thriller, and myth); track six storylines; and monitor key words, symbols, and tag lines.
I completed a scene form for 59 scenes in the book, and included in each scene some details about what needs to happen and the information I must reveal when I write the scene.
Drafting THE BEDWETTER in Scrivener
I downloaded the Beta of Scrivener for Windows over a year ago and played around with it, but didn’t use it seriously. I got serious with THE BEDWETTER. I created folders for characters, research, and scenes. Scrivener 2.0 isn’t perfect either, but it offers scads of cool project management features geared toward writers. I love using it now and likely will continue to do so.
Starting mid-February, I began taking my Blockbuster scene sheets and writing actual scenes from them. Weeknights I would spend two to three hours in any one of half a dozen coffee shops around Pittsburgh’s east end—the same on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays—drafting scenes and making progress. I didn’t start keeping detailed stats until March 3, but here are my word count stats so far:
Date |
Daily |
So far |
Weekend |
2/12/2013 |
1000 |
|
|
3/1/2013 |
? |
6,980 |
|
3/3/2013 |
1691 |
8,671 |
|
3/4/2013 |
406 |
9,077 |
|
3/5/2013 |
1253 |
10,330 |
|
3/6/2013 |
1848 |
12,178 |
|
3/7/2013 |
912 |
13,090 |
|
3/8/2013 |
1001 |
14,091 |
|
3/9/2013 |
1201 |
15,292 |
|
3/10/2013 |
2290 |
17,582 |
4,492 |
3/11/2013 |
711 |
18,293 |
|
3/12/2013 |
666 |
18,959 |
|
3/13/2013 |
875 |
19,834 |
|
3/14/2013 |
884 |
20,718 |
|
3/15/2013 |
884 |
21,602 |
|
3/16/2013 |
942 |
22,544 |
|
3/17/2013 |
1,845 |
24,389 |
3,671 |
3/18/2013 |
541 |
24,930 |
|
3/19/2013 |
604 |
25,534 |
|
3/20/2013 |
766 |
26,300 |
|
3/21/2013 |
537 |
26,837 |
|
3/22/2013 |
735 |
27,572 |
|
3/23/2013 |
1,907 |
29,479 |
|
3/24/2013 |
2,134 |
31,613 |
4,776 |

My initial goal for a first-person, present-tense novel in this voice was 42,500 words. But by the time I finished the beginning scenes and started writing the middle, I realized it would be longer. My present goal is 52,500. We’ll see where it comes in at when I’m finished. And I already have 45 scenes; my total will exceed 59.
Read the First Scene of THE BEDWETTER
I invite you to read a draft of the first scene. I’m warning you, it’s dark. (I’ll confide that some of it has been tough to write.) But I must remain true to my inspiration. This story wants to be told, and I’ve never before enjoyed such a flow of ideas and writing.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you!
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