(no subject)
Largely a non-entry today. The most exciting thing that happened this weekend was that I accidentally washed some money that had been left in the pocket of my jeans. Anyone who makes the traditional "money launderer" joke will be taken out back and beaten with a roll of quarters in a sock.
BUT I did get 750 words written, on an all-new scene that I didn't expect to occur, but which is a very fortuitous one. I'm double-happy about it, because it is a single scene that solves multiple problems. I needed to write what several characters were doing--not that I needed to tell the readers "so and so is doing thus and such" but rather that the question "What the hell is everyone else doing during this time?" needed answering.
I have a tendency to let characters sit around a lot. I have a main cast of dozens, and if I'm focused on one of them, I'll often forget that the others can be doing stuff, too.
I had been tracking the main hero for some while. People have been murdered, and he and his brother were organizing the investigation, and wondering if the main heroine, who has been missing for 24 hours, knows anything about it. Lots of sturm und drang and strongarming and such. Heroine truthfully denies anything to do with the murders, and dodges questions about where she's been for the past day.
And then I was kind of stuck. I felt the need to follow the hero and his brother around for a while, but how much could I follow, honestly? The murders aren't the central part of the story. They're an important subplot, but not important enough that I need to detail every bit of the investigation, particularly since the investigation is about to dead end.
So I had to think about what everyone else was doing.
Heroine, freshly upset from events of the previous 24 hours and subsequent grilling by hero and his brother, wanted to just stay in her room and brood. This would be okay, I guess, but she has a long, broody bit later in the book. She wanted to brood because for the past 24 hours she's been with her old mentor, and he's...well, he's not a nice guy. She's afraid to go out, because she's afraid of him. Her rooms are in a high-security part of a fortress.
And then, miraculously, I figured that since Mentor had let her go, to return to the fortress, then of course he's not interested in harassing her right now. He's busy with something else. So heroine was able to come to the same conclusion, and gets her act together and goes to follow up on the stuff she was investigating 48 hours earlier, before Mentor popped up.
Yay! Heroine moving. Still, largely linear part of plot. So now comes the clever bit.
Big Bad Guy (who isn't really, but heroine wants to kill him) needs some action, too. Additionally, I need to bring in a little more detail about Large Organization. Backstory has some connection between BBG and LO, so I send BBG off to talk to people at LO.
Quite by serindipity--no, seriously--the people of LO are at the same location where my heroine has to go. (It's not coincidence. What she's investigating is related to LO, and though heroine doesn't know that, reader does.)
So heroine will run into BBG on the way to the library. Yay! Explosion!
I wrote the 700 words that get her out of her rooms and across the plaza. Her accompanying escort has just spotted BBG headed in this direction. I smell burning gunpowder.
But my point is...none of this would be happening if I didn't make my characters get up and do stuff, and additionally, if I didn't make them cross paths. I could have sent heroine and BBG to entirely different places, or let her wallow in her rooms for a while longer, so they didn't end up there at the same time. But I want complexity. I don't want to handle one thing, then the next, then the next, switching scenes and characters each in turn.
My current stall is because I don't know whether to handle the imminent explosion from heroine's POV or from the POV of the BBG. I may have to write it both ways.
Anyway, my goal now is to get 20K new words on the page before the end of June, when I take what I've got (there's 90K of old words already) and rework the whole thing into a coherent novel. I have 12K new right now, which leaves me 8K to write in 8 weeks. Should be doable, but I have two freelance projects to work on this week, and I'm spending the weekend with malkatsheva, so not much writing will get done. Everyone go harass her and tell her she has to make me write at least an hour each day on Saturday and Sunday. ;-)
BUT I did get 750 words written, on an all-new scene that I didn't expect to occur, but which is a very fortuitous one. I'm double-happy about it, because it is a single scene that solves multiple problems. I needed to write what several characters were doing--not that I needed to tell the readers "so and so is doing thus and such" but rather that the question "What the hell is everyone else doing during this time?" needed answering.
I have a tendency to let characters sit around a lot. I have a main cast of dozens, and if I'm focused on one of them, I'll often forget that the others can be doing stuff, too.
I had been tracking the main hero for some while. People have been murdered, and he and his brother were organizing the investigation, and wondering if the main heroine, who has been missing for 24 hours, knows anything about it. Lots of sturm und drang and strongarming and such. Heroine truthfully denies anything to do with the murders, and dodges questions about where she's been for the past day.
And then I was kind of stuck. I felt the need to follow the hero and his brother around for a while, but how much could I follow, honestly? The murders aren't the central part of the story. They're an important subplot, but not important enough that I need to detail every bit of the investigation, particularly since the investigation is about to dead end.
So I had to think about what everyone else was doing.
Heroine, freshly upset from events of the previous 24 hours and subsequent grilling by hero and his brother, wanted to just stay in her room and brood. This would be okay, I guess, but she has a long, broody bit later in the book. She wanted to brood because for the past 24 hours she's been with her old mentor, and he's...well, he's not a nice guy. She's afraid to go out, because she's afraid of him. Her rooms are in a high-security part of a fortress.
And then, miraculously, I figured that since Mentor had let her go, to return to the fortress, then of course he's not interested in harassing her right now. He's busy with something else. So heroine was able to come to the same conclusion, and gets her act together and goes to follow up on the stuff she was investigating 48 hours earlier, before Mentor popped up.
Yay! Heroine moving. Still, largely linear part of plot. So now comes the clever bit.
Big Bad Guy (who isn't really, but heroine wants to kill him) needs some action, too. Additionally, I need to bring in a little more detail about Large Organization. Backstory has some connection between BBG and LO, so I send BBG off to talk to people at LO.
Quite by serindipity--no, seriously--the people of LO are at the same location where my heroine has to go. (It's not coincidence. What she's investigating is related to LO, and though heroine doesn't know that, reader does.)
So heroine will run into BBG on the way to the library. Yay! Explosion!
I wrote the 700 words that get her out of her rooms and across the plaza. Her accompanying escort has just spotted BBG headed in this direction. I smell burning gunpowder.
But my point is...none of this would be happening if I didn't make my characters get up and do stuff, and additionally, if I didn't make them cross paths. I could have sent heroine and BBG to entirely different places, or let her wallow in her rooms for a while longer, so they didn't end up there at the same time. But I want complexity. I don't want to handle one thing, then the next, then the next, switching scenes and characters each in turn.
My current stall is because I don't know whether to handle the imminent explosion from heroine's POV or from the POV of the BBG. I may have to write it both ways.
Anyway, my goal now is to get 20K new words on the page before the end of June, when I take what I've got (there's 90K of old words already) and rework the whole thing into a coherent novel. I have 12K new right now, which leaves me 8K to write in 8 weeks. Should be doable, but I have two freelance projects to work on this week, and I'm spending the weekend with malkatsheva, so not much writing will get done. Everyone go harass her and tell her she has to make me write at least an hour each day on Saturday and Sunday. ;-)