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The ugly novel on my thumb drive
Jul. 13th, 2007 04:15 pmHere's where I'm at with that... I hit about 50,000 words (about halfway through a first draft) and hit the end of a "day" in novel time without having a clear idea how the next day's events should run. Ever since, I've been ignoring it and reading research material. Part of this was the genuine realization that one of the main things that had to happen in the next novel-day (I've structured it, at least for now, in seven very busy, very sleep deprived consecutive days, to keep me thinking about sequence, action, time passing etc.) was the slave revolt. And I needed to think a bit more about what forces would be active within the slave society, because I don't want my heroes to be instrumental in the revolt - the slave revolt is its own separate story arc that exists beneath/beside the story, and what I mostly want to show is how the characters I've got going react to this thing - but I have to have a real sense of the shape of the riots/revolts/armed actions/agendas so that the characters get put in the right situations.
I got a bunch of books on African history, a biography of Toussaint Louverture, and some historical books on covert ops and snipers that have chapters on the 1600s-1700s out of the library, and I'm mostly done with that research. I know that at least one of the slaves should be a recently captured griot, that there should be an inciting event back in the political structure of the more-or-less-parallel to Mali/Ghana country that I'm thinking of as the home point for the Nabellans, and that the more-or-less London city will probably burn (again), since fire is a theme in the book anyway.
I suspect I'm at the point where I should pile up the books around me to dip into and start writing again. There's a character who showed up in the last novel-day of events who I'm looking forward to spending more time with, and a big encounter with one of the two main villains to look forward to. But I'm terribly scared about starting again, because I think that there's about 20,000 words of really hard to go, and then darn it I know where the ending is supposed to be (and am starting to have tantalizing thoughts of a sequel I want to try, too) and the idea of actually finishing a proper book with a real plot and characters who aren't autobiographical is just intimidating.
I got a bunch of books on African history, a biography of Toussaint Louverture, and some historical books on covert ops and snipers that have chapters on the 1600s-1700s out of the library, and I'm mostly done with that research. I know that at least one of the slaves should be a recently captured griot, that there should be an inciting event back in the political structure of the more-or-less-parallel to Mali/Ghana country that I'm thinking of as the home point for the Nabellans, and that the more-or-less London city will probably burn (again), since fire is a theme in the book anyway.
I suspect I'm at the point where I should pile up the books around me to dip into and start writing again. There's a character who showed up in the last novel-day of events who I'm looking forward to spending more time with, and a big encounter with one of the two main villains to look forward to. But I'm terribly scared about starting again, because I think that there's about 20,000 words of really hard to go, and then darn it I know where the ending is supposed to be (and am starting to have tantalizing thoughts of a sequel I want to try, too) and the idea of actually finishing a proper book with a real plot and characters who aren't autobiographical is just intimidating.
