And I did it all in about half an hour before running off to an Arabic speaking appointment. But that’s not the half of it.
I’ve been feeling these past few weeks that the plot in my story has been advancing very slowly. I’ve only written maybe 5,000 words in that time, but it seems like everything has been dragging on really slowly. I haven’t really been bringing in any new ideas to move the story much.
But now, in the scene I’m working in, I decided to start moving on. At first, I had no idea what this scene would be like. But then, I just grabbed at something that made sense and ran with it, and other ideas came from that idea for a scene. And then, more ideas, from that as well.
Then, as I was working on the dialogue in this scene, I started getting really excited about it because the stuff they were speaking about was actually surprising me, and giving me even more ideas for how the story could go! If I didn’t have a writing appointment right then, I probably would have written for another hour or so, just to run with it! It was pretty cool!
So, yeah, you could say that I’m still at that stage where I’m always coming up with cool new ideas for the story. In fact, I really don’t have that much of an outline–just a general idea of what I want to happen up to about the midway point (maybe a little bit after), and then this vague nebulous idea of the huge twist that happens around then. I have a good idea of the world where this all happens, and a general pattern for each character, but not too much more than that. The result is that this story surprises me even when I’m in the very act of writing it. And then I come up with cool ideas, and it gets even more exciting, and I just have a very fun time with the whole thing in general.
I suppose, though, that I shouldn’t just run with every idea that pops into my head first. I need to think about it (and, what with so may interruptions from writing, I definitely have enough time to do that). The other thing is that I need to keep a good idea of what is going on in the story globally. If all the stuff that’s happened in the last 20 pages from where I left off isn’t present in my mind, there is going to be a disconnect. I don’t want to be so focused on one particular page that I lose the sense of what it’s like to read the story as a whole.
Other than that…am I missing anything? I’m just an amateur at this, and though this isn’t my first novel attempt, if I’m successful it will be the first one that I finish. Any suggestions that will save me headaches, trouble, and my personal sense of self worth in the future?
