Breach Point: A Supernatural Thriller

Original Story Planning Document

Wow - what a cool find. Right now I'm in the final stages of preparing Breach Point for publication. The book will contain a Bonus MateriaI section with all kinds of stuff showing how the story was written – old text, photos, illustrations, etc. – so I've been digging through my archives, hunting down all those old files.

One of the last things I thought to include in that Bonus section is a music playlist that I made up when I started writing the story. I just searched my hard drive for files that include a song title ("Shiny" by The Decemberists) and found a Word document from July 23, 2005 – almost ten years ago – that was the original planning document for the story back when it was a screenplay and Clara was a college student. I don't think I've looked at this since about 2007 when the screenplay was well in progress and I no longer needed to refer back to my original thoughts.

The full text from the original document is below. If you've read Breach Point and you're interested in the origins of the story, you might find it interesting – especially if you're a writer yourself. I use documents like this as a dumping ground for a project – no judgment, just add each thought as it comes and make decisions later.

The document is in somewhat reverse order - the last sections were written first, and I would add new ideas to the beginning of the document as they came to me. You can even see in the earlier part that Clara didn't yet have a name or even a gender - she's referred to as "the writer" from an early idea that she was an English major. 

It's safe to say that after a decade, I don't remember most of this – reading through it felt like looking into someone else's thought process. Some of the ideas below made it into the screenplay and the book, but many didn't. Someday I'll use Cove Hollow in a story!

Enjoy,

– Steve

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Cool character names:

Joceyln

Thaddeus

Fithian

Nolan

meeker

Lillian

Gavernish - Aunt Maureen?

Brumbaugh

De Nirdo

Bunting

Rudderow

Angrim

Penelope

Sewardsville

Cove Hollow

"It was corny, it was hokey but we loved it."

"It wasn't corny!"

(conversation at the house)

work mickey in again

In the library, Clara is there first to research aunt maureen's condition – then she searches for info about the castle – when the others find her, they talk of their love of horror, and how they all eventually returned to the town

At some point, Clara must distrust Nicholas, for some reason

In the end, Kevin to Clara – "Yes, I want to tell you. There is a secret. You're right. There's something that happened that we DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW CLARA!"

The group doesn't operate much in the summer, because of the prominence of tourists. This is why Clara is more likely to see them using Eric – she's there post-tourism.