Heart of a Dragon - Now With Werewolf
My first Nanowrimo novel...hurricanes, The Bermuda Triangle - adventure on the high seas.
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Just a sort of quick, humorous note. I am writing a novel with supernatural creatures in it. It was carefully outlined, and I knew going in pretty much exactly what I was going to write…except…I didn’t know that there was a werewolf in the story.
What happened is simple, and worth noting. I set up a situation in the novel where one of the supporting characters needs something from my protagonist. My notes say that the two are not on the best of terms. What my notes fail to say is…why? Without that knowledge it turned out to be nearly impossible to write about the two meeting for the first time in many years. I needed something … and I found a werewolf named Louis.
Louis isn’t integral to the story except to bind plot elements, but his story was interesting. Almost fascinating. He might, in fact, be worth a DeChance Chronicle of his own one day. The story, which is told in a memory flashback, could be extracted as a short story – something I may consider along the way.
It was also interesting to find that this little intermission wrote smoothly and quickly. I added a good chunk of words to my Nanowrimo total by inserting it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The point of this note isn’t to talk about werewolves, though. It is simply that if you engineer rifts between major characters, or intimate that they have a history, it’s a good idea to consider your novel might call on you to elaborate. This time I got lucky…a werewolf leaped out of my head and filled the gap. Next time I might try being more careful. Then again, maybe not…it really was fun to write.
It’s still not too late to register to read along as I write “Heart of a Dragon,” Now with werewolf…
-Onward! As of last night, just over 17,000 words in five days. No looking back.
-DNW
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Michael Pokocky says:
Well glad you reconciled
Well glad you reconciled that for your sake. I trust the mind to give me what I need when I need it. I usually continue writing and the why shows up later. But then again the carpet first draft manuscript is exactly that; later in revision perhaps things get resolved, and sometimes I just say,"It's art." and leave it all alone. Nice to meet you_______Michael
David Niall Wilson says:
Well met indeed
I used to write exactly that way, but in careful inspection of my earlier work, I find that the rambling method leads to a rambling story...often with too much that was superfluous. I hate revision, and so, the outlining process has reduced the editing load for me..
On the other hand, I can honestly say I've never followed an outline from beginning to end...and there's all those darned werewolves...
David
Michael Pokocky says:
Oh I forgot to tell you I
Oh I forgot to tell you I start at the beginning each time and read what I wrote up to where I left off, before I begin writing the next scene. I usually end up reading the novel about 100 times. That is the revision process for me.