Every good story has an arc to it. It begins at a place of change and is created by one event following another until it comes to a place where the narrative is concluded.
The inciting incident is followed by a series of plot points, places where complications are introduced into the narrative.
Real life is the same way. As many of you know, this last year has been one of change for me and my husband. If I were writing the story of this year, it would begin with the inciting incident which occurred a year ago this last week. My husband was involved in a car wreck which ultimately led to his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. That was a bad day for us, but thankfully he wasn’t seriously injured, and we got it handled.
Just as in a novel, there was fallout from the inciting incident. Unfortunately, it meant the protagonist’s spouse could no longer drive. That would be the second plot point because it meant all plans for the summer had to be rearranged on the fly.
The opening setting for this story is a small town in an exceedingly rural part of Thurston County. One must travel at least ten miles in any direction to find another city. After sundown, you must drive on narrow, winding, pitch-black country roads. I, the protagonist in my story, suffer from severe night blindness, which meant we had to return home before sundown, putting a real crimp in our social life.
The third pinch point comes in the sudden amount of traveling we had to do for physical therapy and neurology appointments. All medical services are twenty miles north in the Olympia area, as are the full-service grocery stores and a multitude of services we now need. It was like having a day job again. We would get up, have breakfast, and hit the road.
The story’s midpoint comes when, in January, we examined our options. Ultimately, we decided the best solution was to sell our home of eighteen years and move twenty miles north, back to Olympia.
The plot arc of the year had crested the midpoint, and now it was hurtling toward the next complication—trying to pack up, get the house ready to sell, and be a contributing grandparent to the family.
That was not easy.
Three family members have faced serious health problems since January. For one, epilepsy reared its head like the curse it is, and he landed in the hospital again. For the first time, I wasn’t any help other than offering a supportive voice on the other end of a phone call.
Major surgeries happened for the other two, and I was many miles away to the south, getting our house on the market. But our sons and daughters are entering middle age, and our older grandchildren are adults. Despite our worries, our granddaughters proved they were mature and more than capable of handling their lives.
And they all do so, brilliantly.
This is the final battle. The protagonists have been forced to let go and be the caring sounding board whenever one is needed.
And now, we approach the happy ending. The protagonists have managed to get packed up and moved by the deadline. Every task was done, and the house was ready to put on the market by the self-imposed deadline. As of today, our two characters have received some good offers and accepted one. Now they have to hope everything goes as well as possible and the deal closes by the end of June as it should.
Is there an epilogue? Of course. What is the setting for this final chapter? We find our couple in a small apartment in an urban village.
The protagonists are settling into the new neighborhood. One of the niftiest things about their community is the Starbucks—and yes, I did say Starbucks. The owners of the Chambers Prairie Grange building took a huge risk, choosing to renovate rather than tear it down. It was built in 1908 when this area was outside the city limits and was long abandoned, falling into serious disrepair. This Starbucks has the feel and ambiance of a mom-and-pop coffee shop with plenty of comfortable, widely spaced seating placed with a post-pandemic eye. The original flooring has been refurbished, along with the original walls. Even the old Chambers Prairie Grange sign is hung inside there.
Moving to this neighborhood is coming full circle for me, the protagonist. I worked for a large rhododendron nursery in 1989, and the greenhouses I worked in were on the very site where my apartment building currently sits. Across the street from my windows is the property where my uncle and aunt lived in 1966. A large condominium complex is going up where my uncle’s house was, nearing completion. Some friends of ours have bought one of the condos.
From our windows, we have a view of the old grange hall. Back in the day, my ex-hubby’s heavy metal band played there for keggers. Attendees paid two dollars at the door. One dollar went to the band, the other to the host to pay for the beer. (No one underage allowed, no exceptions.) They played many a night there in the early 1970s before the grange hall was shut down and abandoned.
The epilogue of our story shows how life is much simpler for our protagonists. It shows the point of view character, me, admitting how she could get used to the lack of stress and how it feels like a vacation.
The story is an arc that begins at a place of change (the inciting incident), details the complicating events (pinch points), and concludes at a place of relative calm and introspection (the epilogue).
I find that writing is easy here. Creativity comes in bursts, and I feel good about my writing. We have pared our possessions down to the point that they don’t possess us—something you don’t realize is a problem until you are faced with serious downsizing.
With my husband’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s, we have entered a new phase of life. Our children tell us we have earned our stress-free life, and it’s time to enjoy it.
Yes, winter was long and hard, but now summer is here, and the days are long and bright. So, let the good times roll—real life is unscripted, unpredictable, and no matter the plot points, life is always good.
It’s been over ten years since I first started writing my series about the adventures of a professional monster hunter. With the release of 
One of my most treasured experiences in writing The Adventures of Keltin Moore has been meeting the fantastic subject experts in the course of my research. I already mentioned panning for gold, but there have been so many more generous, enthusiastic people I’ve spoken to on subjects ranging from big game hunters to horse-pulled wagons. In particular, I feel blessed to have known Gordon and Nancy Frye. The Fryes are a fantastic wealth of historical information, particularly regarding the development and implementation of firearms over the centuries. If you ever read something in my stories and thought that something involving guns was particularly cool, you can probably thank the Fryes for contributing to it!
Lindsay Schopfer is the award-winning author of The Adventures of Keltin Moore, a series of steampunk-flavored fantasy novels about a professional monster hunter. He also wrote the sci-fi survivalist novel Lost Under Two Moons and the fantasy short story collection Magic, Mystery and Mirth. Lindsay’s workshops and seminars on the craft of writing have been featured in a variety of Cons and writing conferences across the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
The movers came on Friday to take what furniture we could gracefully fit into the new apartment. They loaded the van far more quickly than I thought they would. The main hiccup in that day came in the form of the elevator in our building. We are in building C but must go in through the main lobby in building B, take the elevator to our floor, and cross to our building via the sky bridge. It’s a long trek.
Over the next week, we have to donate as much as possible to be reused, and the rest will be hauled away by the junk removal company. They will not only take the junk but also clean the garage floor. (!!!)
On the good side, it is easy to write here. I have been writing bits and bobs here and there on old unfinished manuscripts between bursts of unpacking, writing whenever I sit down to rest my back. It keeps me from fidgeting.
The good businessperson has a spreadsheet of some sort to account for this side of the business, as it will be part of your annual business tax report. An excellent method for assembling the information we generate for your tax report is discussed in a guest post by Ellen King Rice, 
Column 4 is the sum of column three times column two: Inventory value: $89.11. That is what you would have to pay to replace those books. It is also what some Departments of Revenue may tax you on at the end of the year if the value of that stock is over a specific limit, say $5,000.00. The total value of stock-on-hand for all my books combined rarely exceeds $500.00.
Depending on where you live, the natural world can be hazardous. If something should happen to your stock of books due to theft, fire, or flood, you will be able to claim your business loss.
Who needs a box of corkscrews? Apparently, we do as they go along with our three boxes of wine glasses. Greg’s medication precludes alcohol consumption, and I am a teetotaler. But we proudly serve 
The house seems to have a rhythm. In the morning, a tide of ancient artifacts rolls into the living room from every closet and corner, making me irritable. The afternoon sees boxes of items ebb out to the car, driven away to be donated to charities. By evening the sea of clutter is down to a moderately tidy level, only for the tide of chaos to rise again the next day.
And over here, we have three PlayStation consoles (1, 2, and 3), an early Wii, a Super Nintendo console, and a cabinet full of the games that go with every platform. I quit playing console games after the PS3, and now I play on the PC with an Xbox controller. It’s simpler and takes up less space.
Yes, getting our house ready to put on the market is a daunting task, and it sometimes makes me crazy. But something gets done every day, and we’re inching closer to being able to make that final decision.
About Ellen King Rice:
I could have embarrassed myself and responded childishly, but that would have been foolish and self-defeating. When I really thought about it, I realized that particular plot twist had been done many times before. I thanked him for his time because I had learned something valuable from that experience.
Treat all your professional contacts with courtesy, no matter how angry you are. Allow yourself some time to cool off. Don’t have a tantrum and immediately respond with an angst-riddled rant.
Edible mushrooms of all sorts abounded. One I hadn’t seen before, the lion’s mane mushroom, was the central feature in the displays of the two local craft fungi growers. It was interesting to look at, but … no.
On the writing front, last week was quite productive. I received the final chapters back for my blended novel from my editor and am now going over the manuscript one last time. This is a merging of the stories of two characters and the events of one overarching plot arc. It’s the parallel stories of two battle mages, a father and son, told from their unique generational viewpoints.
This merger of two novels into one involved cutting a number of chapters out of each and layering the stories so that the timeline moves forward at the right pace and doesn’t repeat what we already know.
Also, I submitted my 2020 NaNoWriMo novel to 
Several years ago, I read a fantasy book where the author clearly spent many hours on the food of her fantasy world and the various animals. She gave each kind of fruit, bird, or herd beast a different, usually unpronounceable, name in the language of her fantasy culture.
As many of you know, I have been vegan since 2012. However, during the 1980s, my second ex-husband and I raised sheep. Most of the meat we served in our home was raised on his family’s communal farm. Our chickens and rabbits roamed their yard and had good lives, and our family’s herd of twenty sheep was managed using simple, old-style farming methods.
Knowing what to feed your people keeps you from introducing jarring components into your narrative. In 
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 
