I'm back. And post Camp NaNo, too.
Initially, I had set a 10,000 word goal for the month. It seemed reasonable, a nice chunk of words to get Draft Two started.
But I got busy, and just… unmotivated, so I dropped the goal down to 5,000. Which I succeeded at writing. Not as nice of a chunk, but words are words.
And it was a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I thought that with my Draft One experience, and my handy new outline, the words would just flow and form a bigger, better version of the story. Not so. My 5,000 words were an exhausting slog through exposition and world building. You know, the boring shit I hate. I skipped a big chunk and didn't even introduce one character when I was supposed to because describing how the ice cream shop was set up was the most tedious piece of drivel I have ever attempted. There has to be a better way.
My problem is that there hasn't been much action yet. Just a lot of talking. And not a lot for people to do while they're talking. One scene just involves two coworkers talking on a slow day at work, and eating the maraschino cherries out of the cooler. (Some of my former coworkers may recall doing the same, with the potato wedges on the hot line.) It's not a bad scene. I kind of like it. But it's not… exciting. Does it need to be? I don't know.
At this point, murders are happening. It's a thing that is occurring in the world. But it doesn't affect our characters yet. It will, very soon.
Soon is also the problem, because the upcoming plot point should occur at about 25% of the way through. That puts it the 20,000 word mark. Right now, I'm just beyond 5,000. Do you see the problem here?
I'm great at coming up with stories. Not so great at actually writing them.
My intention is to press on, and then fill in more as needed later. Because who knows, I may end up with 80,000 words from here to the end. Then I would just need enough to set up the world and the characters' place in it. I wouldn't need all this filler. Sure, it would throw off my percentages, but maybe that's okay. Maybe it doesn't have to be perfect.
Looking back on what I have, it feels like it should be way more than 5,000 words. I've covered a lot of ground. Why are my scenes so short? Oh right, because they're 90% dialogue. I really need to work on that…
I've also found the conundrum of introducing characters by name. Like, people show up, and do things, but since the story is told in 1st Person POV, until they introduce themselves, I can't refer to them by name. And how many ice creamery patrons are going to introduce themselves to the staff? I guess I could go with something sneaky like reading their name off their bank card, but that seems… weird. So a character who appeared in literally the first scene still doesn't have a name, because it hasn't come up.
God, writing is hard. Why did I get into this in the first place?
Oh right, because my brain would explode from all the ideas if I didn't.
I'll see you… next week? Maybe.
Title Source: REM - The Great Beyond
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