Excuse Me – What Did You Just Say?

Picture this. You’ve plotted your book, or parts of your book. You may have even interviewed your characters, asking questions about their past, their dreams for the future, and you know, how they’re living in the present.

You’ve made notes, done research, and you’re fingers are itching to hit the keyboard. The sun is shinning (that is for you Keri), the weather is fabulous (forgot don’t mention the weather in the beginning or near the beginning), the iPod is on, playing the music this book is written too, and the kids/pets are behaving. All in the world of writing is perfect.

In fact, this book, this secret project, err, I mean you’re book seems to be one of the gimmie books you’ve heard others speak about, but really wasn’t sure existed.

The words flow from your fingers as you continue to tell your internal editor to go away. You’ll fix it after you’ve finished the chapter. Right now you’re flowing, the muse is happy, the characters are –

So, if I could figure out how to add that squeal of a brakes sound above I would have. This is when you’re writing and you’ve got it figured out. Not the actual words, but you’ve plotted what needs to happen in each chapter and you know why it needs to happen to move the story along.

No need to write useless words just for the sake of increasing the word count. You’ve been there before and cutting tons of ineffective words isn’t fun.

Ah, but this is where it gets good. See, I’m really excited about TLIAV, and truly the words are coming very easy. It is hard to turn off the internal editor, but we had a talk and I promised to edit after three chapters were finished. 3,6,9,12…you get the point. So far that seems to appeased the IE.

Last night I finishing up chapter three and although I didn’t have the scene completely worked out in my head, I did know who was in the scene and what the scene needed to accomplish.

So I wrote, first on notebook paper (yep, the old fashion way), which can be dangerous when I really get going. I can’t read always read my own writing. Can you say speed writing.

Everything was going as planned and then Harry (a secondary character) ask “G” a question and makes a statement. I laughed because I knew differently. Really, “G” can’t think that or have a clue what he did might mean that until at least several more chapters.

Yeah, right. “G” answered him all the while I fought to gain control of the keyboard.

He knew, he wouldn’t admit it to Harry and he really didn’t know at the exact moment he said what he did, but now…oh yeah, now he knows.

At least he’s a bit uncomfortable with what he knows inside his head. Hah!

Chapter four is going to be one interesting chapter, that’s all I can say. You know, secret project and all.

So, what about you? Do you find you’re characters moving up your plotting? Is it like once you’ve put the plotting forward down on paper, they decide to mess with?

Writing Wishes and Plotting Dreams,
Vicki