Getting Back on Track

Journal 57 4-10 July 2022

I’m off and running so let’s keep up the pace.

Last week was the first time I managed to do all three planned sessions. Since starting this novel I’ve only twice done the normal 3-session week. In any case, the book is moving along. I’m getting past all of the initial build up and actually getting the characters hurtling to their “adventure.”

Which made me realize that I have a definite style to the way I handle my Acts. I mean everyone does, but I’m starting to recognize what my “type of story” seems to be.

The Pattern

My thesis novel is an exception because it was written in a deliberate style. But the last novel I wrote, this one I’m currently on, and the original Keegan and Slater novel (look HERE for the background on that) all have the same pattern.

I start out with world building and some flashes back to where the characters are coming from, what happened before. Almost always they are coming off another story into this one, even in the first book in the series there is a feeling that decades of history and stories have come before this one.

I then intro the inciting incident, though it isn’t always clear it is the inciting incident… at least to the pov characters. The reader is sometimes more informed than the main characters, and the reader gets a while of superiority as they see the characters put the pieces together.

ACT II

Once the “Incident” is understood, the characters react and try to counter what they THINK is happening. At that point we enter the middle phase of the book where the characters are hurled along, reacting, running, countering, planning, failing and succeeding, and whatever else. Depending on my pacing this section could be “leaves tossed into raging river” or it could be long travelogue filled with ordeals.

Finish It

In any case my final act is usually very rushed, everything is coming together, there is no time to plan or think too much. It’s just survive or die, and all the chapters become shorter, faster, and—sometimes—a little abrupt. I then take a couple chapters to wrap things up, allow the characters to decompress, and then hit them with the fact that they only accomplished half of their goals and more is their future.

I will admit that I very often feel that I’m too abrupt and fast at the end. Too rushed.  Course, I don’t know as I never get feedback on the last half of a book. Usually, people offer to read and then peter out after the first few chapters. I get it. It is a daunting task to read through a 200k novel and offer feedback on the whole thing.

Well, some day I will have a dedicated reader and this will be righted.

Let’s get back to this week’s words.

Words

Three sessions and a total of 8337 words were added to the novel. Woot!

In case this is your first time reading one of my posts, I aim to write 2000 words every session, thus a week is usually 6k. I’m super pleased to see the word count grow.

Though I will admit I’m only 9 chapters into a planned 50-chapter book… and I’m just short of 50k. Though I’m also getting to the point where the chapters should get shorter and be more action oriented as I’ve established a lot of the problems and all of the background needed to get the reader up to speed on events that happened in the previous two novels.

I’m less than 400 words away from 50k.

And I’m having a good time. That’s the most important thing. My time might be pulled in multiple directions right now, but I’m still producing words and that is all that matters.

Other Writing

I have been toying with working on some novellas and shorts. But I know that’s dividing my time a little too much. I have also been working on a broad overview gazetteer for my world and gathering all of my old notes and disparate pieces of history and story into a cohesive collective. I’m really bad with having notes in scores of notebooks and on scrap papers, and some of them are lost from moving and packed away in boxes in the attic and garage and elsewhere. It is very hard for me to gather everything.

I have worked on a ton of gaming material of late, and I wonder if I could write and design some scenarios and maybe put them on the various estores out there. It’s not normally my thing to write a module and try to put it together and get it all laid out. I don’t have access to photoshop and I did take a few college courses on InDesign and various pdf layouts, but I’m not skilled. I barely made it through the classes through share tenacity alone.

Hobby Time

Gaming has been great. We’re starting a new campaign and I have designed a character I really like. He’s a hell of an orator who can talk his way through anything. Make friends and turn enemies into allies with just a couple words and if that doesn’t work, he can totally mess with someone’s mind and leave them a doubting wreck.

My secondary Curse of Strahd game met up this weekend, and my character was totally borked. After last game we gained a level and I was feeling a little confident, until a vistani bandit cursed me and rendered me blind, deaf, and a hemophiliac in the middle of the woods. We managed to get my hearing back, but I had to be lead for a day and half through woods filled with wolves that would slaughter us on sight and worse beasts. And even after returning to the town, we had to wait another day to find a wizard that could break the curse. It was interesting to say the least, but when your character is the armored tank that normally takes the center stage for all the violence, and now you’re rendered blind and can’t save your friends. It was really disheartening, but we did have some fun RP where my character had to listen in as his companions discovered and spoke to an imp… to clarify, my character is a Paladin sworn to destroy fiends and undead, and I could do nothing but clutch my weapons and make Mr. Furious jokes (Ben Stiller in Mystery Men, if you haven’t seen it, you should).

“Rage taking over, must control fist of death!”

Outro

I was going to talk about movies and podcasts/actual plays, but I feel like I might be overtalking them. I’ll try to talk about them every other week. Suffice I am caught up on several and almost done on another, next week I’ll talk the details.

Thanks again for reading.