Dropping Some Plot Relevant Knowledge

Camp NaNo is… progressing. Very slowly. I'm not writing as often as I would like, but I am writing, so that's an improvement.

I'm maybe… 50 or 60% through the plot. Maybe. Depending on how long the climax and resolution takes. But we're headed in that direction.

Having not yet completed Draft One, I can already tell that I'm going to need to rewrite the beginning. There's a lot of information, like world building and backstory, that I have all figured out, and needs to be in there, that just… isn’t in there. Stuff like what sort of time period this is set in, and who these characters are and why they're doing what they're doing. You know, important stuff. I also spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of a ship they have, and that's just… never mentioned.

And why is none of that in there? I just couldn't figure out how to work it in. You can't just drop it all in via infodump, because that's bad writing. You have to weave it in, with dialogue and context clues. But all the characters already know all of the backstory, so any attempt to have them discuss it will come across as very "As you know…" which is also not good.

This is why works often have an outsider character, who is a sort of stand in for the audience and askes all these plot related questions. Any time there's a bunch of science people saying science things and someone says, "In English?" that's the person I mean. But I don't have any outsiders. Only insiders. Which makes dropping some plot relevant knowledge a little difficult.

But anyway. I'm going to finish Draft One, and then I'll go back and fix all of this. I just need to get the bare bones on the table. Which I think is a mixed metaphor and kind of gruesome, but that's kind of my thing.

Well, I'll see you next time. I just wanted to prove to myself that I can post more often than every other month.