The Plot Thickens...
I've been a bit negligent about keeping up with my novel blog, but it's not because I haven't been working. Okay, some of it is -- I was feeling pretty iffy for a few days due to a kidney stone. But that's over, and I've been working on plotting quite a bit. I actually had a post ready last Wednesday, but I wrote it in a .txt file and then lost it when the power went out at work. Ah, well.
Plotting was giving me fits until this past week. I've got a large plot, and a number of major characters -- it's a big novel. And trying to juggle the characters and plot at once was giving me fits. So I've changed tacks -- I'm plotting by each character now. Working out the scenes of their character arcs separately, so I can stay focused on a specific story/point of view. Then when I've got them done individually, I'll combine them and iron out the inconsistencies.
So far it's working. I've got Annaliese plotted through the first section of the book. A young woman, about 25, recently widowed. She's really taken on life and I like her character. Except that as I originally envisioned things, she wasn't even in the story. She came into being when I thought of a new beginning, at the funeral of her husband (the eldest son of the main character), and then she just grew from there. She's supplanted one of the characters I'd envisioned, so I'm already juggling the cast. There was going to be a daughter of the main character, and now she's gone -- all her best stuff has been taken by Annaliese. And much to the betterment of the story, too. Except that in this first section, tentatively entitled "The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, 1933-1936" she now has too many scenes. By a fairly wide margin. She's going to have a significant part of the first section, but I still have to cut down the number of scenes I've got by at least half. Yeesh.
So I've completely missed my August 1st self-imposed deadline to get the plot done. I'd hoped to get it done by April 15th, but that probably won't happen. But maybe by the end of the month. It's going well enough to do that. With a bit of luck.
Plotting was giving me fits until this past week. I've got a large plot, and a number of major characters -- it's a big novel. And trying to juggle the characters and plot at once was giving me fits. So I've changed tacks -- I'm plotting by each character now. Working out the scenes of their character arcs separately, so I can stay focused on a specific story/point of view. Then when I've got them done individually, I'll combine them and iron out the inconsistencies.
So far it's working. I've got Annaliese plotted through the first section of the book. A young woman, about 25, recently widowed. She's really taken on life and I like her character. Except that as I originally envisioned things, she wasn't even in the story. She came into being when I thought of a new beginning, at the funeral of her husband (the eldest son of the main character), and then she just grew from there. She's supplanted one of the characters I'd envisioned, so I'm already juggling the cast. There was going to be a daughter of the main character, and now she's gone -- all her best stuff has been taken by Annaliese. And much to the betterment of the story, too. Except that in this first section, tentatively entitled "The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, 1933-1936" she now has too many scenes. By a fairly wide margin. She's going to have a significant part of the first section, but I still have to cut down the number of scenes I've got by at least half. Yeesh.
So I've completely missed my August 1st self-imposed deadline to get the plot done. I'd hoped to get it done by April 15th, but that probably won't happen. But maybe by the end of the month. It's going well enough to do that. With a bit of luck.