My writing space for today. Working on character sketches for all the major non-main characters in the story.
Tag: Planning
I’m back to working on my preparations after taking Sunday off. There are several significant gaps in my plot that are bothering me. I hope that by focusing on the setting and characters, I can gain clarity on what needs to happen in the middle of the story, which is currently a bit murky. During today’s brainstorming session of 3,000 words, I did manage to identify some story elements I need to include, like a rooftop chase through the twisted streets of my city’s slums. So, with a bit of luck, a few more days of this work will provide me with exciting content to fill in the gaps in my plot.
I’ve also realized that I’ll need to add an average of nearly 3,000 words to my manuscript each day throughout November. If I had the same amount of time to write every day during the month, I would say it’s no problem. However, I will be traveling for a week in November, and I don’t expect to write my 3,000 words on those days. Therefore, I’ll have to set higher expectations early in the month to hopefully get ahead of my target, compensating for the days when I’ll have a lower word count. I’m not particularly worried about it, but I do need to be mindful of this challenge.
My preparations for NaNoWriMo 2023 are well underway. After some contemplation, I’ve decided to embark on the journey of writing the Steam and Sorcery story. This marks the beginning of character development, the sketching of the plot, and the enrichment of somewhat scant setting descriptions. I’m also exploring tropes and cliches to incorporate additional layers of flavor into the narrative.
As I’ve previously mentioned, these ideas have been nurtured by the world-building I’ve been engaged in for some tabletop role-playing games I’m developing. The fantasy concept took the lead in my decision-making process, piquing my creative curiosity.
Brainstorming can be a delightful process, but it’s not without its challenges. Sometimes, ideas don’t neatly align, and I’m left grappling with the task of harmonizing the elements. At this point, I’ve managed to outline approximately 20% of the intended 40 scenes, with a primary focus on the beginning and end of the story. Now, the task at hand is to unravel the intricacies of the middle section. Sounds like a walk in the park, right?
I was out of town for the weekend, driving home on Monday afternoon. While I had great intentions to find time to write during my vacation, the dream did not match reality, and I got very little done beyond brainstorming. Not that brainstorming was bad, I did add quite a bit of ideas to my idea pool. But I had wanted to have an outline of my story this week completed by Sunday evening, and fleshed out by the end of Monday, and none of that happened.
Today, though, I dug through my idea pool, mixed my metaphors, and started picking ideas that might make for good stories for the Write-A-Thon. I had accumulated a half-dozen or so when I came across one that jumped out at me and said “this is the one.” It’s a delight when an idea does that.
An hour later I had the rough outline put together, and spent another hour or so adding meat to the bones. I’m not yet where I wanted to be by Monday evening (much less Tuesday evening), but I’m happy with progress so far. I also spent some time doing research to better ground my urban fantasy story in real life.
I’m busy this weekend as well, so three more days to get the story done. I think I’m in a good place to hit that goal.
I’m finding myself diving deeply into my characters’ backstories as I do the prep work for the novel I’m planning. For my typical action-oriented stories of novels past, a page or two of notes has usually been sufficient (or so I’ve thought). Since this novel’s main story is heavily influenced by romance novel tropes and structure, I figured I needed to know more about each of my three main characters, the two love birds and the evil person determined to obliterate a star system. (Oh, it’s primarily conceived as a space opera, in case that wasn’t clear before now.) Each of the two protagonists have elicited 5000 and more words of backstory and personality notes, and the villain is threatening to exceed that amount. The further I go, the more I have “aha!” moments about them, and the more complex they get. (For example, during today’s writing I “discovered” that the name of one of my protagonists is an assumed name, something I had never considered before, but which gives him additional depth and secrets to protect.) I usually am too eager to start writing the novel but find myself having large gaps in my novel outline, especially in the “muddy middle.” “Something happens here!” But as I add depth to my characters, certain scenes suddenly demand to be added to my outline. I’m totally fascinated by this.
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