Today I have finally had the inspiration I needed for the next episode of Rain, Steam and Speed. It was while I was out of the office for a walk at lunch time.

I often find walks a good way to think something through. After recording the first episode last week, I got the plot synopsis for the series out and tried to write a plan for episode 2.

Nothing happened.

I got as far as:

Scene 1 East End – policeman attacked.

And that was it.

In between I got almost no writing done at all, not even on the short story I’m supposed to be finishing.

But today, the ideas that had been bubbling away for the past week, all came together. I was able to plan out some 11 scenes which would simply and understandably carry the plot of deception and treason from the home of a respectable middle class man to the decaying warehouses and dark streets of the East End. Now I can take each scene and flesh it out with the necessary dialogue to paint a word picture for the listeners. That is not as easy as it sounds. In a couple of minutes you have to explain where you are, what’s happening, who everyone is and how they got there. It’s a pretty good exercise in story telling, as it is very compact but has to communicate quickly and clearly.

Having moved one project on, it’s giving me the energy to get something else moved on. So tonight I will probably get a couple of hundred words added to the short story. I left the protagonists in a building filled with diabolical cultists. I suppose I had better rescue them…