Madeleine's Story - Brainstorming Phase

I just spent the last couple of hours (plus some of my commute today) brainstorming the storyline for my next romance novel. I had always intended for it to be about Madeleine, who is the best friend of the heroine in my current book and also, conveniently enough, a French girl orphaned during the Revolution who has lived with the Stauntons since she was five. Drama, right?

I originally intended for her to be secretly in love with the eldest Staunton son, who is now her legal guardian (but since she's 25 and he's 33, this isn't creepy in the way that you might think). In addition to being a hot English earl, he's also a collector, and I thought that perhaps something in her back-story played into an artifact that he just acquired. However, upon further reflection, she might end up with Ferguson instead -- Ferguson is the best friend of the hero in my current book, and feigns being an insane, selfish dilettante to infuriate his father, who despises the fact that Ferguson will inherit the dukedom. The father has ordered Ferguson to find a bride -- and I'm thinking that Madeleine would be a good initial start. Both of them have reasons to feign an engagement -- Augusta Staunton, who basically raised Madeleine, is pressuring her to find a husband, and Ferguson realizes that a Catholic-born French girl with a small dowry and no family connections is the best way to drive his father mad. What neither expects is that their charade will turn all too real.

Add in a betrothal from the past that comes back to haunt Madeleine, Ferguson's need to balance his desire to ignore his father with the responsibility he feels toward rebuilding his Scottish estates (inherited from his mother after his father has already devastated the woman's ancestral clan), and some other ridiculous twists, and this is definitely showing some promising seeds.

Writing is an interesting process. I can have an idea someplace -- in this case, in a flash as I was driving down the 101 at seven a.m. -- and see the general outline almost immediately. But, it then takes several grueling months to understand the twists and turns in these characters' paths, to find the scenes and the conversations  that move them inexorably from point A to point B, and the personalities that make people care about finding out what happens to them. Or, rather, I *hope* it takes several grueling months -- I think I could finish a good first draft in three months if I diligently worked that much writing into my schedule, and I certainly can't afford to take three years like I have with my first book. But now that I know that it's possible to find a polished gem within the piles of gravel, I think the second book will be much easier.