Well, look at that day! It’s halfway through the month, which means (for anyone doing camp nanowrimo) that this is now officially going down the mountain. Personally, I think I hit the midway word count a few days ago, since I was ahead thanks to a couple of days of crazy inspiration. Sadly, I’m not as far as I’d like to, mostly because I didn’t get to write yesterday, but I’m still caught up!
All that said, I do want to go on a little talk about plans, outlines, and projects.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m actually revising something for this particular Camp NaNoWriMo scenario, which means I technically already have an outline of what I’m doing, and a good sense of where it’s going.
Which would be nice, if I were able to follow my darn outlines :/
To summarize this month’s experience so far, I’d say my story keeps spiraling out of control.
I came into this revision with a big plan for rewriting the beginning and the ending of the novel (which is pretty much on top, and good), but I never intended to touch the middle that much. But, I keep having an issue of character actions.
My original story had a very particular version of my MC, which felt a lot younger, probably because I did imagine him being somewhere in between 15 and 16. However, he got older in the revision, partially because I needed him to be a bit older for the plot.
On top of that, I straightened out the plot in order to make it easier to follow. I don’t have any weird crazy twists, or anything that would confuse the reader. Instead, I have a simple plot of: Something is stolen from MC, and MC wants it back.
Funny enough, this has complicated things. I thought that simplifying that plot would make things easier, but it hasn’t. Instead, now I’m dealing with a whole slew of, “but, MC wants this really bad. So, why would he do this? And, when that question comes up, it changes events. Now, thankfully, most events are set in stone, and those are working well. My problem is that every event is happening fairly differently.
Here’s an example: I had a big scene in the middle of the novel where MC felt useless because he’s not able to do any of the things the other characters to in real life. So, in this one scene, he’s off watching a fight happen and providing support from afar.
Well, turns out that doesn’t work in this revision at all. He’s actually supper stubborn about wanting what was stolen from him, which places him in danger. To make it worse, he doesn’t trust the two other characters near him because they both are part of the reason that was stolen from him.
Now, all that sounds okay. The problem is on character actions based on desire. The villain originally makes an offer: “give me this thing I want, and I let you go” (that sums it up). Originally, since he didn’t know what that was, it made sense for him not to take the offer. However, in this version, after making the plot simpler…he knows what it is…(it’s one of the 2 characters with him), and he doesn’t really care about them since he can’t trust them. So, why wouldn’t he take the offer at all? Why wouldn’t he turn them in?
So, I came up with a replacement scene, and he does sell them out. It just makes sense. I also managed to make the response to that work because I have characters doing things independently. In short, I fixed it in my plotting. BUT, and here’s the big one. It means I need to rewrite that entire scene.
It doesn’t help that I’m trying to convince the character to believe on something he thinks is insane (I wrote one entire chapter explaining a concept that needs to be there, but I think it’s too abstract and boring).
I guess what I’m saying is…I hate my MC because I can’t convince him to do what I want him to do. I think I’m going crazy -__-
Anyway, I’ll keep updating soon, and once I’m done with this draft, I might actually start updating with some extra words about a different topic. Good luck with Camp Nanowrimo if you’re doing it!