I Think a Story’s Coming Together
I plotted 23 more scenes in Geohexaes, making 34 plotted so far. I’m estimating that I’ll need around 80 scenes, so I’ve plotted about 40%. Of course, it’s the second half where things get tricky.
I’ve met and/or anticipated 15 or so secondary or tertiary characters whom I also need to do CDSs (Character Data Sheets) / Interviews for/with. While I have a system of sorts that helps with this part, and I do different depths of interviews with different characters depending on the amount of time they’ll actually spend on stage and/or their importance to the story, interviews take a while for me. Depending upon how forthcoming a given character is with me, a primary character may take three to five hours, often in multiple sittings. A tertiary character normally takes a solid hour. It ends up being very worth it to spend time getting to know my characters before we get to deeply involved in the action of things. But it’s time-consuming and sometimes emotionally draining for me.
I’m seeing some themes start to emerge. I’m also seeing some lessons my Leads need to learn. I’m not sure when/if/how thoroughly they’ll learn them, but I’m going to see if I can’t make the universe of my story offer them the chances to learn them - and hopefully offer the Leads some serious punishment and reward accordingly.
I like how my hero is shaping up. He starts out in a place that’s pretty sympathetic, but he has a lot of growing to do. Which means that I get to put him through a bit of hell, and that he may get to/need to make some pretty serious sacrifices by the end of the stories (two books are planned).
Another one of my characters is going to start out as a tertiary antagonist in the first book, make a switch to a secondary protagonist in the second book, and then probably die for the cause by the end. I’m torn between being giddy and sad knowing that she’s going to grow on me so much and that I’ll then get to/have to kill her. And I don’t even know her name yet. But I like her.
A character I didn’t originally expect to be all that important is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I don’t think she’ll ever be important enough to be a ‘Lead’ because the points of the stories aren’t about her, but she’ll definitely be irreplaceable. She may die also, but she might also hang on to the end. I’ll have to see what happens.
One potential problem I’m seeing is that I don’t have a single person who is the primary antagonist at this point. I have plenty of people who are hindering the action. But the trouble is that the scale of the story has offered a problem with an entire group of people, and at least in the first book, I don’t expect to run across an individual villain or two.
Another difficulty is that I’m not sure which of my two plots is the main plot and which is the subplot. I know which character I want to be the first Lead, but his problem gets rather put on a back burner pretty early on, although it continues to add some adhesive to his cooperation in the second Lead’s problem, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get to resolve it fully; which is part of the sacrifice he may need to make - a moral sacrifice of giving up his dream(s). The majority of the action of the story is centered on the second Lead’s problem - so with problem-two and Lead-one being the focus of the story, how do I balance the amount of time I spend where?
That’s what I get to work out as a story teller. If I don’t have to struggle to write it, my characters probably aren’t going to have enough struggle to be sympathetic/enjoyable to my readers, and the story won’t be worth reading. So, all in all, I’m not upset that I’ve got problems. I’m glad actually. But I’ve got to work through them nonetheless.