CHOP AND CHANGE
Only a few days to go and, while the writing is getting done,
it’s becoming a bit of a tangle that might need a little more than a ‘hammer
& chisel’ in the edit phase.
DAY 20 – 1367 words
Despite another driver attempting to take me of the road
again tonight I managed to get home alive. A good word count achieved even if
it didn’t cross the required total of 1667. Still, I have two short pieces
completed that I know I can expand more once I get to the rewrite. Our hero
meets a several new companions but at this stage of writing all my
introductions are quick. I prefer to get stuck in with dialogue and action
about ten seconds after people turn up but I’ll expand things and slow little
moments down as I rewrite next month.
DAY 21 – 2032 words
Once more I had one of my slow days. And as before a fight scene,
similar to the previous one with wolfs and a character death, suddenly
escalated. I found myself creating a new monster (or monsters), a sort of mini
villain for this part of the story and also I ended up rewriting two characters
history’s and motivation.
I don’t tend to spend much time creating my characters in the
planning stages of writing. I prefer to have just a basic sketch and about two
lines of background. That’s it. I focus more on the story I want to write and
let the paper thin characters come to life around it. Sure I can get 20,000
words down the line and discover our hero’s best friend is now driven by the
death of his pet dog. But I’d rather go back and change a character to how he
or she wants to be than force a character with too much planned details into a
situation that they don’t fit.
DAY 22 – 1941 words
I started to wonder if I’d have any time to write today. As
morning turned to afternoon and afternoon turned to evening I still hadn’t
found the time to sit down with laptop. But, after dinner, I forced myself to
not accept a day without any words going down and a muddled through.
Although my characters knew of the catacombs under the temple,
I had never intended for them to go down into them. Yet the previous days
writing left them with no other option than to flee the fight and seek another
way out. But instead of them finding a tunnel and a secret exit on the other
side of the forest I thought it would be more interesting for them to find a
secret room with a treasure inside. This was mainly because people walking
through a tunnel for twenty pages is boring but also because I really wanted
them to all head back and discover just who was trying to kill them and why.
DAY 23 – 2030 words
Today went like yesterday but most of that was because I was
not going to miss the final race of the 2014 F1 season. Coverage started at
midday and I carried on watching long after the chequered flag had dropped when
dinner was served. Once my son was in bed and everything was washed up I got to
writing and somehow managed to pass my target with lots of plot and dialogue.
I did have an issue with certain characters leaning stuff at
a point that I felt was too late into the story, stuff I hadn’t dreamt up earlier.
But, like Abraham from the Walking Dead would say, “we don’t go back”. NaNoWriMo
is all about powering forward and worrying about the kinks later on. Therefore
this will all be worked out and rewritten in the edit.
On the down side, despite taking a crack at this week’s Angry
Hourglass prompt for Flash Frenzy, I just found my imagination couldn’t come up
with anything and so passed on that writing challenge for the week.
DAY 24 – 1526 words
I started a scene today but lost my way. After 300 words I
thought it best not to slow down at this stage and so I skipped on to where I
knew I needed that scene to end and just carried on. What I wrote next leads
into the final part of this volume for Fallen Swords. It’s all about the mystery
surround whole towns becoming mass graves. As I’ve built towards this I’m
getting more ideas to plant the seeds during editing. I want more about the politics
between two of the states and the civil war that is brewing.
DAY 25 – 949 words
Today carried on from yesterday. We meet a crazy man who has
been living around the dead and we finally see what is happening to the people
who were unlucky enough to escape the event that is wiping out town after town
after town. Is it a curse or a virus or something much, much worse?
I know, but you’ll have to wait until next year.
DAY 26 – 2002 words
The scene that keeps growing had more added today with our
main characters taking a big risk in their methods to contact the rebel
leaders.
WRITING IS FULL OF
SURPRISES
It’s been a real head spinner this last week. The best way to
describe it is that the story feels like a map on one of those old RTS games
like Command & Conquer. The whole map is blacked out at the start except
for a little area around your base. As you move around the world you uncover
more and more map. But there always comes a point when the map is fully uncovered
and you see about seven different spots that would have been better to start
from if you’d known they were there.
When I started the story I had a loose idea with several
beats planned out, stepping stones I had to pass over. But as you flesh out
characters, introduce new locations and uncover subplots, you see more and more
of the world you’re creating and your brain can’t stop giving you extra ideas
with what to do with it all.
I know I’ll be using this first draft as a more detailed outline
come December. I will start again with a cleaner idea of where I want it all to
go. I will slow down, build things in more detail.
Hopefully you guys enjoy what comes out the other side.
ONE DOWN
So as we near the end, there’s time for one final shout out
to my NaNo buddies; Caitlin McColl (42396),
David Graffham (27285), Casey Rose
Frank (40821) and Rasha Tayaket (33651). Hope to see you all on the
other side of 50,000 come Sunday. Good luck.
Also a big, big shout out to Adam Nelson (54175). Congratulations on completing NaNoWriMo 2014
See you in seven.
No comments:
Post a Comment