Plotting
It's funny how things work for me (subtitled: it's interesting, if uncomfortable, living in my brain).
Last year's Nano Novel is finished and revised (though another revision is always possible since I'm a chronic clock-polisher: I just keep polishing until they take it away). This year's Nano is 50,000+ and moving along well.
So next year's Nano shouldn't even be a gleam in my eye yet, right? Since I still have one in the oven?
Nah. Doesn't work that way. Last week, I made my first notes about the book that will probably be next year's Nano. No title yet, no first line, no plot even. Just a character (a real humdinger!), setting and POV (first person, hers: we'll call her Clara, for the moment).
Oh, and a note that I need, eventually, to find a plot. Thought maybe I should throw one of those in, just for fun, this time. The story ostensibly won't be about my colorful POV character. She will be telling someone else's story. But of course, the POV character is always the main character, even when it doesn't appear so at first (a la The Great Gatsby).
Well, at 4:30 this morning, I woke from a dream that really needed to be written down, and having to make the choice to get another two hours of sleep or capture this golden thought, I...
Wait for it!
....Come on, you guys! Give me some credit. I got up and jotted a page of notes. After which, I couldn't get back to sleep.
But it was worth it because I realized the story I had jotted was exactly the story my character needed to tell. Sufficiently compelling that it obscures, at first, the fact that the real story is the MC's, fits very much into Clara's life. I'm not sure it's high-concept (East of Jesus most definitely is), but it's not far. Riding the line between plenty of action to keep a story going and a deep, thoughtful dive into the sub-psyche: just like I like them.
Funny what my subconscious dreams up while my conscious is working. Off I go to add a few hundred (or thousand) words to Nano 2005.
Last year's Nano Novel is finished and revised (though another revision is always possible since I'm a chronic clock-polisher: I just keep polishing until they take it away). This year's Nano is 50,000+ and moving along well.
So next year's Nano shouldn't even be a gleam in my eye yet, right? Since I still have one in the oven?
Nah. Doesn't work that way. Last week, I made my first notes about the book that will probably be next year's Nano. No title yet, no first line, no plot even. Just a character (a real humdinger!), setting and POV (first person, hers: we'll call her Clara, for the moment).
Oh, and a note that I need, eventually, to find a plot. Thought maybe I should throw one of those in, just for fun, this time. The story ostensibly won't be about my colorful POV character. She will be telling someone else's story. But of course, the POV character is always the main character, even when it doesn't appear so at first (a la The Great Gatsby).
Well, at 4:30 this morning, I woke from a dream that really needed to be written down, and having to make the choice to get another two hours of sleep or capture this golden thought, I...
Wait for it!
....Come on, you guys! Give me some credit. I got up and jotted a page of notes. After which, I couldn't get back to sleep.
But it was worth it because I realized the story I had jotted was exactly the story my character needed to tell. Sufficiently compelling that it obscures, at first, the fact that the real story is the MC's, fits very much into Clara's life. I'm not sure it's high-concept (East of Jesus most definitely is), but it's not far. Riding the line between plenty of action to keep a story going and a deep, thoughtful dive into the sub-psyche: just like I like them.
Funny what my subconscious dreams up while my conscious is working. Off I go to add a few hundred (or thousand) words to Nano 2005.