The good part was hitting 50,000. The scary part was realizing I'm only about halfway into the story. With nine days left, I'm going to see if I can keep hitting my @2000 words a day pace. I want to finish the story, now that I have the idea of how to shut Bob the Internal Editor down. I'm hoping to work through my outline and complete the novel, then set it aside and go back to The Gate To Paradise. Those characters have been politely waiting their turn. Well, maybe not so politely. I have a cast of dozens breathing down the back of my neck as I write. And they really need to brush more often.
The cast for The Godhunter is much more limited than that of Gate. I don't know if that was from necessity or that it just worked out that way. The plot is also less dense than Gate, but that's okay. Godhunter is a more straightforward story. That was a big help in outlining. In both stories, I knew where the protagonist started, and I knew where I wanted he/she to end up, the difference is, in the simpler story, the change is a much lesser degree than in the complicated plot. No one does a 180 degree turn around, but character realizations are more complex in Gate.
My antagonist in The Godhunter didn't come into his own until the past few days. A few scenes I wrote with him alerted me to a few peculiarities of the character. His desires are a little more complicated than I gave him credit for, and he's convinced what he is doing is the right thing. It is the right thing... just maybe not for this moment in time. But since he is wearing his villain colored glasses, he can't really see that.
The female protagonist in the story is much more contrary than I planned on. She harasses and snarks at the main character far too much for my comfort. I need to discover her motivation and make it clear, or she'll just come off a bitch. I stumbled across a clue when I posted an excerpt the other night. Now I have to work backwards to figure out how the incident effected her actions, and then work forward to make sure everything syncs. I like doing that part of editing the story, but alas, I'm not allowed to. Not yet.
The rules I set myself said no going backwards, only forwards. It should make editing interesting when I finally get to it. Hopefully the skills I learned in doing NaNo will pay off in more time to tinker, and less time smoothing sentences when I should be charging ahead. Since I sent Bob out for pizza and beer two days ago and he hasn't come back, maybe I can get another big chunk done before he notices the credit card expires at the end of the month, and no more free beer. I'm sure he'll be back with a vengeance then.
No comments:
Post a Comment