Today was a good day.

My daughter and I have been talking stories and creating stories since she was a teenager. Today, I discussed with her my idea for Cold Storage, which is an award-winning screenplay I had written years ago and which I recently did a rough draft conversion to a novel during last November’s NaNoWriMo.

That process made me realize the gaps between a screenplay, which ends up being a visual film, that, in this case, was my own personal homage to Alfred Hitchcock, and how little of that approach applied to writing a novel.

Since then, I had fleshed out a lot of ideas about how best to utilize the core components of Cold Storage for a novel. Today my daughter and I sat outside and talked through all the characters, their motivations, and the plot elements that would be built upon their story arc foundation.

Me and my daughter on my back porch taking turns with a notepad sketching out the story

After a couple of hours we had crafted a really exciting thriller.

Afterwards, it reminded me, again, of Alfred Hitchcock. He would storyboard his films in their entirety, shot for shot, and, upon completion of that process, had finalized the story in his mind. Actually shooting the film was a tedious process for him because that moment of inspiration and creativity was over. He was now putting it on film so other people could see the story in his head.

When we were done sketching out the characters and story arc within Cold Storage, we were both so excited by the story and plot twists, and then realized how much work was ahead of me to make that available to others.

Creatively, these are good challenges to have. But, my only frustration is the months it will take for me to convert the story my daughter and I crafted today into a novel that you can consume and enjoy later.

I can’t wait to share this story with you!