progress report
I achieved my thousand-word goal last night, so now I only have 95,000 words to go!
The first scenes I wrote for this book were constructed as standalones, for my own benefit, because I had no idea at the time how they'd be connected. Right now, I'm working on what will probably be chapter one. Since I know what happens in chapter one, I'm writing it in order, start to finish. I noticed last night that the story seemed to be moving slowly, or the writing was. I realized this had to do with the transitions. It wasn't that the transitions were bad, or lengthy, it was just that I had to sit through them while writing them, which was a change from simply writing scenes that were "the good parts" and stopped immediately afterward.
I remember this feeling from before. When writing transitions, I become more aware of myself practicing craft, because I'm less emotionally engaged. Which transition do I need to show? Which can I skip? How can I include a room description in that transition? What bit of character tension can I include when the two people walk across town together? It feels slow because I'm thinking all this as I write, and I at least think through most of the steps necessary to move the characters from one place to another, even if I don't put them on the page.
Transitions are a large part of the book, and the character and descriptive bits I include in them are going to have a cumulative effect. I have a lot of words to use up in this novel, but I don't want to waste any.
The first scenes I wrote for this book were constructed as standalones, for my own benefit, because I had no idea at the time how they'd be connected. Right now, I'm working on what will probably be chapter one. Since I know what happens in chapter one, I'm writing it in order, start to finish. I noticed last night that the story seemed to be moving slowly, or the writing was. I realized this had to do with the transitions. It wasn't that the transitions were bad, or lengthy, it was just that I had to sit through them while writing them, which was a change from simply writing scenes that were "the good parts" and stopped immediately afterward.
I remember this feeling from before. When writing transitions, I become more aware of myself practicing craft, because I'm less emotionally engaged. Which transition do I need to show? Which can I skip? How can I include a room description in that transition? What bit of character tension can I include when the two people walk across town together? It feels slow because I'm thinking all this as I write, and I at least think through most of the steps necessary to move the characters from one place to another, even if I don't put them on the page.
Transitions are a large part of the book, and the character and descriptive bits I include in them are going to have a cumulative effect. I have a lot of words to use up in this novel, but I don't want to waste any.