In the midst of working on other projects, I'm always thinking about The Long Road, my NaNo novel from last year, and how I'm going to fix it. If you're just joining us, it was essentially about three friends who go on a road trip, and slip from reality into pockets of weirdness. It didn't work out, as a NaNo novel, coming in at only 25,000 words, but it had so much potential.
The main thing I've been thinking about lately is that it needs more lead-up, more time to establish characters. Which means a minimum of two chapters before anything weird even happens. We need to learn who these people are before we throw them in the grinder.
For instance, Tony has to wander off. That's a given. It's a thing he does, that kicks off a major plot point. But he also needs to do it sooner. I need to show that this is a character trait of his, so that when he does it at the worst possible time, you're not wondering why.
So that's all well and good, just add a few chapters of them doing normal road trip stuff. The problem being, I've only been on a couple of road trips, one when I was six, and one that was just a straight line from point A to B, no unnecessary stops on the way. So I don't really know what people do on road trips. And I know, it depends on the people, and I'm working out what kind of hobbies and interests these characters would have. You know, what kind of things they'd stop and detour for. Are they history nerds? Hikers? Connoisseurs of local craft beers? I don't know.
But in the meantime, I open to suggestions. What kind of things would people in their early twenties do on a road trip across America? Initially, they were going from Massachusetts to California, but those were arbitrary points and can easily be changed. Also, recommend road trip movies for me. I say movies, rather than books, because I just don't have the time to read several books, whereas movies are like two hours apiece.
I'm kind of hoping to work on a revision of this story for Camp NaNo in April. That will give me some time/word count constraints to keep me focused and working on it. And it should give me time to finish the thing I'm working on.
That's it for today. Like I said, I'm open to suggestions. I'll see you Saturday for the next installment of "Just One Yesterday."
Argue. People on long car rides always argue about what to do, when to stop, etc. also, switch up drivers. Compromise. One guy wants to see the biggest ball of twine, everyone else thinks it's stupid detour. But they all have their own stupid detours.
ReplyDeleteStop at gas stations for fill up on gas (duh) as well as junk food (someone's always smells bad, or is noisy, or other wise grosses people out). Someone always has to pee at every test area. We call it IBB (Ity bity bladder syndrome).