As I've said before, I prefer to be what Brandon Sanderson, and probably many others, call a discovery writer. I like to sort the story out as I go along. I have a beginning, I have an end, and I have some loose plot points in the middle that I know I want to get through. In the past I've occasionally used things like the Heroes Journey to give myself a bit of structure, but I never felt like I was locked into it. Heck, on the first piece I really tried to use the structure on, I killed a main character off quite a bit earlier than anticipated, just because it felt right in the moment.
For Eastgate, since I've been trying to figure it out for so long, I took to outlining. I figured it would help me work out the knots in the story as NaNoWriMo approached. It seemed like a wonderful idea, especially since I was dealing with so many characters.
Well, tonight I realized a solid reason why I've never felt right outlining before now.
Amber is a critical element to this story. It's a symbol of the old religions before the reign of the Dark Lord, and the people of Eastgate esteem it a great deal because of that.
Now, I had already sort of worked out exactly how things had to play out with amber. Who was obtaining it, why they wanted it, and how they got it.
Tonight I sit down to continue the scene I worked on last night, and I realize that there's a huge plot problem with this scene.
Initially the scene called for one of the Dark Lords orc marshals to enter the scene looking for amber, and already having some with him that a character would attempt to steal. Except, in the restructured way of the world, figured out after I'd outlined this scene, marshals would never been out looking for amber. The Dark Lord still wants it.... but he's not being obvious about it.
So when I sit down at my computer I stare at the blinking cursor for the better part of an hour (well, not really staring at a cursor, more like doing all those things that writers do when they try to put off writing... like facebooking, looking at the news and doing research).
It takes me the better part of an hour and a half to realize that I can salvage what I'm doing by backtracking a handful of lines of dialogue that I wrote last night and eeking the scene in a new direction. It makes for a terribly shaped scene, one that's going to require a buttload of work when I do the first draft (this draft as I've mentioned is Draft Zero), but it's functional and it points the character who needs to be somewhere in that direction. Awkwardly.
Anyway, I don't think that there's any other spots where I will find myself stuck so badly because of the outline. I still face a major hurdle in figuring out how two character can survive a 7 story fall, and then figuring out how those same two character will be able to be healed up and back in the story in some kind of rapid manner.
Regardless...
Todays words: 1,667 (right on target)
Total words: 15,691
Tomorrow is a crowded day, so I need to be back up early to get my words in before my day gets consumed by everything else.
Good night all, and if you're still awake...
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