I have been working on this story since I crossed the finish line of the 2008 NaNoWriMo competition, trying to solidify the plot to something intelligible and believable. The mind mapping technique worked to outline the newer characters, and I had constructed what I thought was a solid plot at the time. My characters evidently thought differently because they spun off into a new and totally unanticipated direction.
During the past several weeks, I’ve been churning out the chapters at a faster pace than normal. The story kept coming, forcing me to set aside my other projects until I typed THE END. Excited, I pulled all of my chapters with the hopes of seeing at least 70K words. That wasn’t the case, much to my disappointment. I’m at 55K right now. The good news is that I feel I have a better plot that could still use some minor tweaks here and there.
I just need to work on expanding some of the scenes and going deeper inside my characters’ heads to draw out their motivations better. My goal is to expand this novel to another 40K words by the time I’m finished with the final draft. There’s still lots of work to be done on this novel, but it’s not nearly the struggle to write as Prosperity was.
While I’m letting SOE simmer, I’ll be reading a few how-to books. I was thrilled when I saw Stephen King’s On Writing available for the nook, along with Nancy Kress’ Dynamic Characters. Those are my all-time favorite books about writing. I found another, called Description & Setting, by Ron Rozelle, which I am reading right now.
Description has always been my weakest point in writing. I guess I’m afraid of being too wordy. Fortunately for me, there are exercises in that book that will help me practice.
