Novel-Tone News Day CXXIII

Welcome back to the..Project.

As I get deeper into this whole novel thing, I am more and more convinced that this project is big, bigger then even I had thought, and believe me, I thought it was huge. For a long time, this story has been there, and now that it is coming out, I realize just what it takes to do this. It takes a lot, that simple really. But like so many things in life, it is not that simple.

I have tried and stopped and started and screwed around with novel ideas for years and years. I used to think I was trying to write books, the kind of books I read, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, stuff like that. It is not that simple with this story and that is probably why I have been going at for four months now. It just keeps coming, sometimes in barely a whisper, sometimes like a torrential flood. Bottom line, the story keeps coming out and I keep writing it all down.

When I started with the scraps of notes and outlines and stuff I had accumulated over the years’ way back in October in preparation for NaNoWriMo, I had no idea where I was going with this. To be honest, I had hoped it would stick, and I would keep going and the story would come out. So far it has, but in no way I had envisioned. I thought by now I would be deep into the revision of the first draft, I was wrong.

The first draft is almost done, sort of, maybe. I don’t really know. I guess if you count a first draft as the plot written out, you know, the point A, B, C and how it all happens from an action stand point, then yeah, that part is done. My characters do a bunch of stuff from page one to the end, that part is written, more or less. It is the other stuff I am talking about, that stuff is not done.

And what the hell is that stuff anyways? I mean, is not a story the characters do some stuff, then some more stuff, then the end? I have a bad guy and a bunch of good guys and they all do some stuff and interact and do some more stuff, then the book has a resolution, and an end. Granted, I am putting that in simple terms, but seriously, that is pretty much the book right there.

I realize that in a novel, there are layers of action and characterization and what not that is all part of the story. I do think there are about four drafts as you layer in the whole story, the what, and the why. I guess you could say I am in draft two then, but that is the simple answer. More to the truth would be I am just plodding along, writing the novel. There is progress none the less, that is the important part here.

About five days in to the story, a character says that it appears the protagonist has not been sleeping. Another character explains why. In a brief exchange of about a hundred words, so much is said. It shows the past and is fore shadowing the future and is a characterization of the two people talking, and whom they are talking about. It sounds pretentious when I write that, as if this is the best exchange between characters in the history of story telling. I assure you, I don’t believe that at all.

I point this out because there are many points where I feel this happens, through out the story. Now that is pretentious! But seriously, all funning aside, it is true. I know this story like no one else and I know what is important and where the truly pivotal stuff occurs.

As I layer in all the stuff that I want to be part of the story, the important stuff that I want to be in there, I realize that it happens, everywhere, all the time. Every sentence, every word, is important. This is what is slowing me down. But it is worth every bit of time I put into it, at least I believe it to be true.

To keep myself in perspective, if and when other folks read the story, I have no doubt that what I intended will not be as readily apparent to everyone else as it is to me. In other words, this stuff makes the story, but it is the stuff that, hopefully, will put meat on the skeleton and give it punch and coolness and never be so obvious that it distracts from a good read. Those are some lofty goals, but why not.

The end is just the beginning..