I spent some time today working on my structure. I moved a few scenes, and added some more scenes to my outline. I've only been working on my book for a few weeks, and I'm currently at 15,000 words. Much of my time has been spent outlining the book, and doing research. I have the basic story established, with a narrative flow I'm comfortable with, but there are a lot of holes that need to be filled. I read about writer's discovering unexpected story development, letting the characters take them to places they hadn't considered. I had a good day yesterday in that regard. I was writing about the death of a character that I wasn't sure how to handle. The narrative just seemed to flow, without much pre-conceived idea on my part on how things would play out. I was very pleased with the result. I do tend to think a lot about the scenes and how to write them, but this was just a free flow of writing that turned out better than if I had tried to force it.
Have you had experiences of the story taking on a life of its own? Have your characters taken you to unexpected places?
My writing does that to me sometimes, makes for a lot of editing, because more often than not when you let the characters tell you their story it comes out better then when you force it yourself. Just happened to me, actually, a character I had no intention of killing died. Weird, but it works with the story really, really well.
ReplyDeleteThat's great Ann. Well, maybe I should offer my condolences regarding your character, but it's great it worked out for you and your pleased. In my scene, I knew the character would die, becuse many of my characters are based on real people (mostly family members), but I wasn't sure how to handle the reaction of the other characters. My main character received the news at work (she works in a bar), and the bar owner created poker games at all the tables (which was illegal) and provided free drinks in exchange for the players donating their winning to the widow. I hadn't thought of that prior to writing the scene. The bar owner just took charge and set it up. Thanks for commenting and best wishes on your writing.
Delete15000 is a few weeks is rather impressive! Maybe I'm just a slow writer. I only just started mine this past week so now I have a goal.
ReplyDeleteI agree with letting the characters tell their story. Honestly sometimes I feel like my MC is just sitting next to me telling me everything.
Best of luck!
--Katie
The Fiction Diaries
Actual Katie, I just checked the calendar and it's been 10 days since I started my book, although much of that time has been spent on outlining and research. The thing is, my current process is to just get the story down. There is very little character development or descriptions. I'm just trying to tell the story, add dialogue, and deal with the scene descriptions and characters later. I don't know if that's a good process, but it's the way I'm working for now. I may change my approach as I get further along. Thanks for commenting and best wishes in your writing. Oh, your site is very cool and when I get a break I'll spend more time checking it out.
Delete