Ceci n'est pas mon roman
Er, this is the obligatory* 10000 words into NaNoWriMo whine that I'm writing garbage.
I think the problem is that I am very well acquainted with the global plot of It's Still Desertion but have only the vaguest notion what the local plot is. I'd try to make an analogy with the definition of differentiable manifolds, but 1) it would be a bad analogy, the sort that get tangled somewhere in the middle and stop making any coherent sense, and 2) differentiable manifolds would probably just make some of you more confused even if the analogy itself didn't.
Suffice it to say that I know the big events, the transitions between sections of the story, but I have only a general outline of what happens between these things (Emeryis and his family travel around the Peninsula being a theater troupe, as per usual. Diolene is caught with suspicious people once or twice, and spends a lot of time at the post office. Eater attacks become more frequent. Diolene leaves.) Unfortunately, that's not a lot of information for several years of in-story time, and I haven't figured out my minor characters enough (at least the ones who are currently around) to let them carry the local plot.
So the current plan is to write a vague sketch of the local plot and focus on the bits I do know, which will hopefully make more sense than they did last year. And then sometime I'll get around to figuring out the details of the local plot. But probably not during Nano, because time for planning one's story is not in abundance.
At least I'm pretty sure I have enough story that I can get away with skipping the local plot and not run out of words.
*Where by obligatory I don't mean that one must always write such a whine at such a point in November, only that my current feelings towards my story suggested that such a whine was necessary. . . . Fine, mostly I just wanted to use the word obligatory.
I think the problem is that I am very well acquainted with the global plot of It's Still Desertion but have only the vaguest notion what the local plot is. I'd try to make an analogy with the definition of differentiable manifolds, but 1) it would be a bad analogy, the sort that get tangled somewhere in the middle and stop making any coherent sense, and 2) differentiable manifolds would probably just make some of you more confused even if the analogy itself didn't.
Suffice it to say that I know the big events, the transitions between sections of the story, but I have only a general outline of what happens between these things (Emeryis and his family travel around the Peninsula being a theater troupe, as per usual. Diolene is caught with suspicious people once or twice, and spends a lot of time at the post office. Eater attacks become more frequent. Diolene leaves.) Unfortunately, that's not a lot of information for several years of in-story time, and I haven't figured out my minor characters enough (at least the ones who are currently around) to let them carry the local plot.
So the current plan is to write a vague sketch of the local plot and focus on the bits I do know, which will hopefully make more sense than they did last year. And then sometime I'll get around to figuring out the details of the local plot. But probably not during Nano, because time for planning one's story is not in abundance.
At least I'm pretty sure I have enough story that I can get away with skipping the local plot and not run out of words.
*Where by obligatory I don't mean that one must always write such a whine at such a point in November, only that my current feelings towards my story suggested that such a whine was necessary. . . . Fine, mostly I just wanted to use the word obligatory.