Search for the Throughline

I'm on the hunt.

This is always the way my stories evolve.  I have a nebulous throughline.  As the characters become real people with real lives and real decisions to make, the throughline changes.  It's like "Alice" from the Twilight series.  Her visions are subjective; they change.  Oh dear, now you know I've read Twilight.  Well, it is a crossover book, you know!  Anyway, the throughline for Amber is fuzzy. 

When I write a throughline, I begin very simply.  A character wants something and has trouble getting it.  What does Amber want?  She wants her best friend back.  Madison.  They've been together forever.  Their moms went to college together.  They have lived across the street from each other since birth.  Until now.  Until the "F" bomb was dropped in Amber's family's living room.  Foreclosure.

Is that enough to keep the action going?  I don't think so.  That is a secondary throughline.  So, what is the main storyline?  What does Amber want?  I was also thinking perhaps she wants to go to Camp Seymour.  It's a common destination for 5th graders in Western Washington.  A trip to camp happens in October (or sometime in the beginning of the school year.)  It is a celebration for making it to the top class of elementary school.  Or something like that.  Really, it's an excuse to play outdoors for a week.  But Amber can't go.  Her family is cutting back.  But they make too much money for the scholarship.  And her dad won't take charity.  So, perhaps the "desire" for Amber is to attend Camp Seymour.  But since she can't, she decides to make her own Camp Seymour?  On Rattlesnake Ridge.

Now some scenes are forming.  Now there is a reason for her to be in the woods.  But... there's the but. 

Amber WANTS to camp outside in the woods, but her parents forbid it.  Will they notice she's gone, though?  With their money problems and Daddy's work review coming up and the three-year-old twins, Bailey and Brady, adjusting to apartment life? 

What if Amber suspects her parents are making up the "thing in the woods" story just to scare her and her friend, Jack, out of sleeping in the woods overnight?  She wouldn't hesitate to do what she wants.  She is that kind of person.  Close a door.  She'll climb through a window. 

One night in the woods. 
It won't kill her. 
Or will it?

:-)

Happy Writing,
Rachel