Hello everyone,
This week I felt I’d really gotten into the routine of writing, which is great news come November for NaNoWriMo. Every day, the day didn’t feel complete or like I had accomplished everything I should have until I set aside time for writing. Most days it wasn’t an issue at all, as I was also looking forward to jotting down more ideas for the story. Once or twice this week, the outlining did get pushed back to late in the day, but no matter how late it got, I always felt the motivation not to lose the momentum of outlining daily.
The week started out outlining more subplots for another group of characters. I came up with a whole sort of hierarchy within this cast of characters, what their motivations would be, and how this would lead to in-fighting among them all, based off of their clashing ideals.
It might feel extensive and exhaustive to work develop subplots for so many characters. Yes, a book can be any length you want, but the average book is about 70-80,000 words, and the three books I’ve published have all been about half this length. But this sort of refinement really helped me realize a personality trait among one of them, and I don’t know that it would surfaced without these deep dives during the outlining process. The more I thought about it, the more this trait was not only in line with the actions that this character is going to take as the story unfolds, it enhances those actions as there’s now going to be a clear motivation that the reader will be able to follow.
Within this hierarchy of characters, I also began to develop little subgroups within them, each with their own characteristics. It’s another detail that I think will make the story more polished and the characters and world I’m creating feel more alive.
For most of the week, I went through a run down of the plot again from another character’s point of view, although this one was different from the rundowns I’d done with the three main characters. I did their run through not from their perspective of the story, but their perspective of a feud they’re in with another character…one who is not going to appear in the story at all.
It was an idea I had for this character that they would be clashing with the Governor when I’d first started outlining. At the time, I wasn’t sure that this subplot would make it into the manuscript. If I’m being perfectly honest, I still don’t know if its going to make it.
BUT!
Although there would be no appearance of the Governor, and possibly no mention of them, I thought about what this character would have going on in their life during the events of this story, and believed that being engaged in a political feud would absolutely shape the actions that they took as the book progressed, and that battling this political opponent would serve as a great motivation for the actions that they take.
I’ve done this for stories before. I’d come up with a backstory for the Senators in Dig Down, having them collude, regardless of party affiliation, to secretly run things and maintain power. The only sort of clue to this was the votes that kept granting Axel defense contracts, and I didn’t really get in depth about it until I wrote a short story explaining the workings of their political back dealings. Nevertheless, having this backstory helped me write that book because I had an idea of how and why they operated. Their actions felt right to me, which helped me convey that on the page, and I expect to do the same here.
Until next week.