The Smug before the Disappointment

Journal 65: 22-28 August 2022

Getting better with the titles again.

Or perhaps that is the smug? HA ha.

I’ll get right into it. I’m smug because I had an excellent week of writing and I should have another this coming week, but the disappointment is coming.

Let’s get that out of the way first.

Next weekend I’ll be going away for labor day weekend and there is a chance I won’t be able to get a post out, and I’ll probably get little writing done over Sunday and Monday, my two main writing days of the week.

But we’re here to talk about last week.

Words

For the first time since the first week of July I managed to get in all three write sessions. I got lost in the words and I also wrote in a different way (more on that in a little bit). I hammered out three chapters this week.

Here we go:

11,089 total new words for the week. Three chapters completed, and the book now sits at 93,643, or what I consider about the halfway point. I’m just introducing one of the last main characters, and only have one more secondary character to throw in the mix (but I need to admit that I keep creating one off characters for scenes that are so fun that I want to do more with them—more on that in another little bit).

Change up:

So, based on friends’ suggestions I switched over to Scrivener to write my rough drafts. I then compile the whole thing and clean and edit it in Word. Now, the reason it was pushed on me is because I write my stories in multiple storylines that usually all come together or are happening in parallel or what-have-you.

But, despite me changing storylines with every chapter, I usually write the book as you read it. Each chapter is written in order. Meaning if I cliffhanger a chapter, I have to wait until I get back to it to write the rest of the scene. This means I have to go back and reread the entire chapter before I can write the new one.

I finally skipped a chapter to write the next and then went back this week.

Chapter 15 and 17 had a conversation that was split in two and I wanted to get everything “on the table” and out for discussion amongst those characters.

To be honest, I’m surprised that I don’t spend more time just writing one side of the story and then going in and writing the other side.

Writing Methods:

Most of my outline is just a bunch of bullet points in each chapter and a road map to where I want to go.

I explained in about half a dozen of these posts that I consider myself a Hybrid Writer. A synthesis of Plotter and Pantser. As much as I have an outline, it is mostly just a couple pages of notes telling me the course of the journey. Literally and figuratively. Most of my stories cover traveling across countries from place to place trying to get to an end goal and all the obstacles in that path. I’ve yet to write a book that takes place in a single location. Like not even one that takes place in only a single city.

What I call an outline is pretty much an itinerary of travel, what happens in that location or how it fits the theme/symbolism, and maybe a few characters to met. But for the most part its pretty slim on the details.

When I sit down to write the chapter, I usually map out the town, or location, I think of names of places and things around… I might take time to do a little research but I have to invent 80% of the material in each chapter while writing it.

Which brings us to…

Random Characters

When my notes say, “punctuate the discussion by having goblin brigands attack.” I have nothing else to go on and since my dialogue/arguments are unplanned and made up on the spot I never know when I’ll end. If it’s becoming an essay in the middle of my novel, I usually try to cut it back to salient points and then add in the action sequence to get out of “lecture mode.”

In this case, it came to me suddenly that I needed the leader of this little band of brigands to be a stand out. Suddenly I had a tiny goblin in a tricorn hat and a long coat who started out with a Cockney then shifted to Irish accent. He was adorable.

Look at him duck and let his bandits die instead of him.

Look at him grinning and running away, blowing a kiss.

Of course, I needed to bring him back in another chapter. And now I want to write a story about this goblin brigand and his adventures. Guess I’ll add a short story to the list.

The rest of the week

As to the rest of the week.

I finished Vox Machina…. Two? Weeks ago, so I’m blasting my way through the Mighty Nein now. Loving it, even if some of the characters are totally assholes. I’ve added two other actual play shows to my list as well. So, I have a lot on my plate.

I have also been working my way through Dimension20…

In comics I started reading enough some of my backlog. I’m almost out of room in my boxes but I have some other space to open up. I still have to get to work on house work. And… I’m trailing off on things not pertinent to this blog.

D&D is awesome. Had a three-game week. As the monthly Curse of Strahd game happened. Every game went mostly well… all three ended on a bit of a cliffhanger (with various lengths of time between the next sessions). I have one character laying low in his cover-life identity who might have members of the guard and foreign military officials knocking on his door (though really, they shouldn’t). I have another character who just arrived in a new shithole town in Barovia and he’s at a loss as what to do, and the third character is in the middle of a sunken temple to an ancient dead Titan.  

Two of those I won’t return to until the end of Sept.

But I digress…

Thank you for reading about my words and method and a little bit about hobby…