write a novel

My brain is full of cotton wool this morning, or I’d be writing it right now rather than checking in on 43T.

Still making progress. I’ve been ‘wasting’ time on re-writing great portions of it rather than just getting stuff down, but I really think it’s been a good thing.

The other good thing is that a friend has agreed to let me use his name for the villain (it’s a superhero book, after all), and that’s given me the angle I needed to make him a fun character rather than just a straw man. Dr. Stanford has a certain flair that just wouldn’t work for Dr. Markoff…

I think I’m about half way through (hard to tell, since some of the sections are not in order. If that’s the case, changing the amount of story in the first book was the right move.

Note to self – keep looking until you find the right POV for each section. If you don’t want to make a character sympathetic, don’t show why too much about why he or she makes the choices s/he (sie) does. YES it’s important to develop a motivation for each character, NO it’s not necessary to share that motive. Just make sure that there really isn’t any ‘evil for evil’s sake.

Realized I had to re work some earlier scenes in the book. When I got to the one where the character first refused to co-operate suddenly it’s within character for him to act the way I’d wanted him to in the first place.

Stubborn bastard just has to be the center of everything, that’s all.

If I add a few more chapters and make it a trilogy (or a long three part book) I should be able to kill him off at the end of book one.

I think.

I’m about 30,000 words in now, and about a third of the way through part one (I’m thinking book and sequel – the story does have a logical pause).

I plotted loosely, not sure if that’s a good thing or a mistake. I keep finding little dangley threads which might or might not weave in logically later. Some of this has already worked out well, as in REALLY well, but I can’t be sure of tying up all the loose ends this way. (Still room for a series, right?)

I’m worried about one character who isn’t co-operating with the story line. Of course, it would have to be the character whose death is a key plot point… He has to die at a particular point in the story. I’m not sure I can re-plot around his surviving (buy, hey, didn’t Harlan Ellison do it once?)

This goal is why I’ve been spending so little time on 43T lately. When I have a few minutes of computer time during the day I spend it writing.

Today I’m feeling pretty down about it. I’m feeling that the idea is trite, that I’m not handling it well, that if I ever get it finished I’m going to have to cut about half of it out, and that no one would want to read it anyway.

You know what? I’m going to keep writing anyway. At least, I’m going to finish the rough draft. The re-write is something I’ll deal with when I get to it.

So don’t panic if I’m not around. Things are fine, I’m just writing.

The plotline calls for killing him off about three chapters from now, but he’s already developed a mind of his own. It took me almost 700 words to convince him to climb a damned staircase – that’s almost three pages (I’d expected about one).

Not just his dying, but his dying under a very specific set of circumstances, is vital to the plot. Usually it’s a Good Thing^tm if the character comes to life, but I’ll have to replot three quarters of the book if this doesn’t come off.

I know, I know. One page at a time. If it happens, I’ll take some time off and re-plot.

Almost 8K words into it, not to mention character bios and cryptic notes which aren’t at all meaningful to anyone but me. :)

The idea, and two of the main characters, have been floating around in my head for a few months now, but I just jotted down a paragraph and kept thinking about the other story… (the one which needs research). Then, this morning, I woke up and it was there… I mean, the first six chapters were there. Jotted them down in yWriter, then just kept going.

Now I have 23 chapters, with a paragraph or two for each one, giving a story arc and major characters. There are still a lot of details I know but haven’t written down.

The key this time is to back up everything in addition to the auto backups, even though I upgraded since the crash…