Octopodded
I'm thinking now the idea to set down 'Hot Pressed' last week was the right choice, as I was able to jam out 5000 words in two days whilst riding public transit. Finding some super arousing material to write about was just what I needed to kick me out of the doldrums.
I took the story idea for 'Omniscient' that I described a few weeks ago and am turning that into a very squicky story about an Octopus hive mind, called 'Octopodded.' It won't follow the outline I posted exactly, since stories tend to start changing once I get down into the weeds writing them, but it will follow similar themes.
Yes, it's going to be fucking weird. No, I have no idea why women getting bred by Octopus creatures and turned into recruitment vessels is so arousing to me.
I make no apologies for this one. I'm not making a huge effort at character development; it's pure stroke material.
I don't have any idea when this will be done, or even indeed if my motivation will allow me to continue to work at the level of speed I have shown during the past week, but I would hope to be able to post at least the first part starting the week after this one.
Robotic Restitution
Although the individual stories will have their own names, as I described last week, I believe I will retain the original title as the name of the trilogy.
I've finished first pass editing of chapter sixteen this week, so everything is still on schedule. There's still four chapters to go, but they are relatively short(er), so they should theoretically go quicker.
The final book is shaping up to be about 70,000 words long, which is about the target I wanted it to hit anyway. I was quite surprised myself that it's working out so well.
Nope, haven't done anything with the covers yet. Probably will end up being a last minute thing that I'll hate myself over. Oh well!
Out of Order Writing
I know there's a lot of people out there who write complete chapters out of order, then try to fit them into the whole story later on. I think I've only ever done that once. Usually it's not a thing I plan on unless there's a specific plot beat I really need to hit at a particular part of the story and I know it's something I'm definitely not going to change.
Otherwise, that kind of out of order writing doesn't usually appeal to me because I like the flexibility of being able to change my mind on how the story is going to get to its eventual goal. If a better idea for a plot twist jumps out at me while thinking about what happens next, I can incorporate it without having to go back and rework large chunks of the story.
I have a friend who has been working on a trilogy of books for some time now, and they're in editing hell. He's blown his books apart and is re-writing the first book because he has more experience with the characters now and he wants to nail them down and make them feel like they have a bigger 'presence.' I don't think I could ever drop back and re-work a large story like that. I'd much rather finish something, then move on to something new and do a better job the second time due to the lessons I've learned from the previous work.
I digress. I only bring this up to illustrate that I want to do anything possible to avoid having to re-work an entire novel, and writing chapters out of order raises the possibility that I'm going to get something wrong, causing more editing challenges.
Anyway, the sort of out of order writing that does work for me, is what happens when I'm writing a scene. Sometimes my mind wanders and dialog starts coming out for what's going to happen one or two steps in the future, or I get a clear idea of what something should look like just a few paragraphs down.
In that case, I always go along with the inspiration and get it on the page right away before it vanishes. It's kind like a dream, where you know you'll never be able to hold onto that thread and capture it if you don't do it right away.
Usually it takes a bit of effort to go back and make the link between where you were and the small out of order snippet you wrote, but it definitely helps to push the story along faster.
Best to follow the whims of motivation, I say, since they're so fleeting!
Good luck to all the writers out there!
No comments:
Post a Comment