I missed the deadline to add my word count to the NaNo website last night. I wrote until about 12.30am and my word count for the day added onto today's record. That's disappointing, mostly because I don't like seeing that records show I didn't do any work one day but also because I passed the magical half-way mark (25000 words) and when I put my entry in tonight, there's not going to be a record of exactly that time. I know - build a bridge.
At my writers' meeting last night we talked briefly about what to do when the plot stalls and you don't know where to go. One of the girls suggested changing the morality of one of the characters. I thought about that for a while, trying to decide who it would work best with, what way their morality could change and how it would work best. That's where I got 1500 words last night in just on an hour. That small change has also given me the set-up for the next chapter and a way for all the major characters to begin to deal with their internal conflicts. What a fantastic way to get things moving again.
I'm not putting an excerpt in today. As I've become less sure of where I'm going with the book, my writing has become less ... less everything. There is the occasional phrase that's pretty good, but the rest is telling, not showing and, basically, absolute rubbish.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Even if you are bogged down, you're at least writing, and that's far better than what I'm doing. I just can't write fiction anymore, even though I daydream about it all the time.
Do you write from an outline? I keep thinking if I'd only work out an outline and know where I'm going I could try fiction again.
Every book seems to be different, not that I've written a lot of them yet.
This book came from a piece of paper I found on the floor of my office. It had fallen out of a folder and said "Rats live on" and mirrored that to "No evil star".
It took me a couple of months thinking about that to get the planet in my head and a character profile done. I started NaNo with two character profiles and a planet profile. That was it. Since then I've done profiles for three more characters and a basic "Plot sketch". It's supposed to be the plot but it's more the story goal and the character motivations and how they link in with each other.
Other than that I spend the day thinking about the story, as much as work and other things allow, and then start writing after dinner and keep going until I run out of the scene in my head.
Post a Comment