1:00 ---I've gathered my stuff and am sitting on top of my bed thumbing through a notebook searching for a blank page.

1:07 ---I've decided to pin down Sam's inner conflict, thinking that is a wise foundation for building a story off of. So, I referred to a list of possible conflicts I'd made the other day and tried to find one for Sam. Revenge, Despair, Doubt, Rebellion, Greed, Stubborness, Unforgiveness, Hate, etc. didn't work, so I decided to go with fear.

1:10 ---made a list of possible fears, than crossed off all the absurd ones, i.e. fear of dragons, fear of the dark, fear of evil rulers, etc. Made a smaller list of realistic possibilities. The list is as follows. . .

• What if Sam struggled with the fear of loosing someone he loved? That's not so hard to fathom, especially since he's just had that happen dramatically. How would he react to this fear? Would he clam up and stop letting people get close? That doesn't fit Sam. Scratch idea one.
• What if Sam struggled with fear of physical torment? Well, first I'd have to establish what kind of physical suffering it was. No, this fear makes him seem whimpy. Others might not think so, but I do, and I'm the one who has to write him, so no. Scratch idea two.
• What if Sam was afraid of failure? Would he never try anything? Wait, a person can't never try anything. He has to try some things. Scratch idea three.
• What if Sam was afraid of being powerless? He would try to do everything he could not to be powerless and helpless, so he'd fight hard and build up his strength in all areas physical and mental. That's not Sam. Scratch idea five.
• What if Sam was afraid of disease? Well, there are a couple little bitty problems with that. One is that I doubt they had health nuts and neat freaks and the mere possibility of being sanitary all the time back than. He could become highly supersistious, which I believe the majority of people were, but again, that isn't Sam. Scratch idea six.
• He could always be afraid of death. That would work but. . . Why would he be afraid of death? Because he is uncertain about eternity? No. Because dying is so gruesome? Yes. This is a more possible idea than the others, the trouble is I'm still a bit concerned about the "whimpy" factor. If I was starting from scratch and building a character to have this as their central conflict, I'd pick someone strong and macho, then it would be sort of ironic with their personality and. . . interesting. However, I could still make it work for Sam, but there are other dangers. For one, my mind keeps thinking of a favorite character, Walter Blythe. If my mind keeps going there, I'm in real danger of copying him and ending up with a poor immitation of him. Even if there was no danger of that, I'd be stuck with how to make Sam face his fear of death, and I've already explored that in the past only to run into a series of dead ends.

The moral of the story is: From now on, I need to establish the conflict first and build a character around it instead of vise versa.

Closing thoughts: Wow, a half hour goes by fast!