In case the dream got left by the wayside, as my recent posts would have you believe, no I'm still working towards a novel. I'm using the snowflake method as I posted about a bunch the last year. Working through character sheets, scenes, all of that. Have an excel sheet and everything. It's hard work, needs a lot of thinking and planning ahead. It's getting somewhere and I'm a little excited for this.
Once I'm done with a scene list, a 1/2 page summary and the full character sheet, it should be writing all the time. The homework that goes into it is insane, but it's given me some great visibility into what goes inside a writer's head. Also something I'm very excited about: daily writing here has broadened the scope of possibilities of where my stories could go to. For example, with the khyaak story I was stuck. The khyaak forces a lame guy to kill a bunch of people, he doesn't want to in the beginning but he does. And eventually he starts enjoying it. We realize in the end maybe the khyaak is acting according to its nature, it's the human that's evil. That would have been a pretty great turn, but the journey would be challenging. There's only so many murders until the reader gets bored, didn't know how I'd stretch out the plot.
Now I realize I don't have to wait till the novel end. Midway in the novel we can turn from the khyaak's point of view and realize we've been victims of an unreliable narrator. The khyaak wasn't really telling the man to kill anyone specifically, just the generalities that would have been satisfied by doing something peacefully entirely. He didn't turn into murderous intent, he always had them and was just looking for an outlet, an excuse. So now the second half can be the full-out chase of our previously protagonist, the conflict between the monster and the man, the man's attempts at evasion etcetera. In the end he blames the kyaak and people believe him, nobody wants to believe there's so much evil inside a human though they know in their hearts he's the murderer.
Learning in progress.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.