Ask Elnora--How Does Your Garden Grow? Lenora Worth

Hello, little green-thumbed garden girls. Spring is in the air and that got me to thinking about my garden. I used to have a big, rambling yard that included a swimming pool and a palm tree and a spot that I called the Dark Forest (very shady and full of surprises.) We had Confederate Jasmine and lilies and azaleas. But that home belongs to someone else now. Now we don't even have to mow the yard but that also means we don't actually have a garden. So being the innovative woman that I am, I decide I'd come up with a new kind of garden--a dish garden. And since I've been subscribing to Southern Living Magazine since I wore my first pair of plastic pink fuzzy high-heels, I knew exactly what I needed for my little garden--a thriller, a filler and a spiller. I hope to have several different dish or container gardens on my deck this summer. I like a lot of color and fragrance. I have a gardenia and some lavender out front in our little walkway space and I plan to plant a hibiscus out front, too.

So all of this talk about gardening also got me thinking about our books. When we write, we also have to have a thriller, filler and spiller kind of plot, don't we? Our plots are much like garden plots--we till the soil--the germ of an idea. We come up with a grid--our outline and synopsis. We plan out the main plot points--our thriller, our filler and our spiller. The thrill comes with the set-up and the call to whatever quest our character decides to pursue. The filler is the middle, the lush, thickly held part of our story that carries our characters through and the spiller comes when we push through the black moment and tumble over into that happy ending. A beautiful combination.

So how does your garden grow? What seeds to you try to plant whenever you start a book?

Here is my new little garden spot. It has already brightened our deck. I hope to add new furniture and a few other treasures to make this little spot intriguing and inviting. I hope to do the same with my stories. Let's discuss!