NaNoWriMo Week 2 (and a bit): Who’s that guy?
So, the basic plot for this novel is one that has been bouncing around in my skull for, oh, about ten years now. I’ve always had a pretty good idea who the main cast would be, what they would be like, and how the plot would go. On November 1st I sat down to finally write this novel that I’d been ruminating over, and figured that it was all going to go just like I’d planned it for the last decade.
In the second chapter I introduced a few extra characters to fill out a dinner party scene. One of them said his bit, bowed, walked off stage and we’ve never heard from him again, as is good and proper. One of the other ones, however, attached himself to my protagonist and rapidly became his best friend.
At first I smiled at this little slice of life, but as it became clearer and clearer that this interloper wasn’t planning on going anywhere I started to look for ways to gently get him out of the story. The problem was that he and my protagonist were now fast friends, and what’s worse, this new guy was actually pretty well developed and fit into the story like a gear in a Swiss clock. Trying to pull him out would bring the whole thing down on my head.
A few chapters later the new guy gave us his life story and to my astonishment it was better than some of the life stories I had been working on for years. My attitude to this little me-tooer switched from a slight desire to chase him off to a more appeasing stance, making sure he was comfortable, got enough face time, because he’s made the whole story work better and has just quietly suggested ways in which he can be helpful in wrapping up all the loose ends.
So, the moral of the story is: Don’t belive you are in control of fiction during a first draft. You can be in control during the later drafts.
The good news is that I’ve written over 32,000 words out of 50,000, which means I should be done with the NaNoWriMo challenge a bit earlier than the end of November and can probably get a few words about this whole Papermaster thing up before it blows over. Is it just me, or does Papermaster sound like a terrible hybrid Print Shop/Filemaker program? Everytime I see his name on news sites I wonder how he got it. I can only think it was a joke at Ellis Island some years ago.
Anyway, be good, have fun, I’ll be back with some Not-Entirely-Sane Apple News soon.
Yeah! Good to see your well on the way to mission accomplished!
It is often said that a person “has a book inside of him/her.” I hope when you have released this book to the world, you aren’t left with a yawning chasm inside.
Maybe your writing project met another cute little writing project inside you, and they got busy and had children. Then you might become an incubator of literature, forever launching new progeny to the stars.
Oops, I’ve run out of metaphors.