Rough Draft One
You will note I'm much closer to finished with the First Rough Draft than I was a few days ago.
This is because the First Rough Draft is going to be shorter.
Not 130,000 words.
More along the lines of 80K.
Progress is like that. Illusionary. Or illusive. Or hiding in the bushes laughing at me. Or something.
Where I am ...
-- I have the last scenes imagined, but not written. Some I can see clearly and it's just a matter of sitting down and writing.
Some, not so much clear.
I'll keep plugging along, doing that.
-- Next ... I'll look at the 'shape' of everything that's happening in the whole plot. I'll see it visually and in color. I'll draw the plot on paper with high excitement points and low and see what characters are coming forward or falling back. I'll draw character arcs. See how my central love story is holding the stage.
Or not.
I do know I need more of Maggie and Doyle. I need them together more.
-- Then there's Major Research.
I have major and weird research to do.
I'll have to visit the university library. But I'm not going to find most of what I need.
I'll try.
Then I'll bother actual living folks only as a last resort.
-- There is this one pivotal scene.
I have to put my villain and Doyle and Maggie all in the same room right near the end. This is, of course, for the express purpose of allowing them to be, respectively villainous, heroic and heroine-oic.
And we do this denouement thingum.
I just need to get them there. Plausibly.
That's technical plotting junk and will doubtless clear itself up.
-- All the time, I can't decide which of three possible ways to write the opening scenes.
Things are not looking good for the bunny scene, though.
Please keep the bunny scene!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I have been thinking about the garden scene in MLAS and I think its needed there for reasons that have more to do with the development of the Jess/Sebastian relationship and not the plot. And I think sometimes scenes like that are really important to the mood and the feel of the book....so long as its not descriptions of landscape. I bet the bunny scene is like that.
I will miss the bunny scene.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to get cut in Rough Draft Two ... I'm pretty sure.
Bunny has two strikes against him.
First strike ---
I should probably hop into the story at a moment of drama and high action and emo goth spazing-out emotion.
If someone gave me the outline of the story, just coldly laying it out like a patient etherized upon a table, I'd tell 'em to opt for the high drama.
Said high drama not being the bunny scene.
The second strike is that even if I take the low drama road and go all slow and philosophical ... I may still bypass the bunny scene.
Pity, that.
But I haven't really decided yet.
And it nags and nags at me.
This must be that writerly angst they talk about.