Chapter 24 is in the boot. It came out at 1825, a little long but necessary. I also had to pull a stupid trick at the end, but I hope my readers will forgive me if I hold a little back from them. So that's Act II in the bag. On to Act III, in which Doris gets her oats.
Well, no, Act III is where all hell breaks out, we have a few respite chapters, but mostly it'll be killing people. Or finding them, or rescuing them. Gary needs some more training (which was part of what I wrote last night). And I have one or three more surprises for him waiting (he he he). However he shouldn't need any more hospitalization, and he'll be directing most of it. New Frisco will be different. I'm not sure how many bladesmen will be left at the end of it. But the bad guys can't win. Funny thing though, the good guys are also bad guys. Go figure.
Now the voices of the gremlins are chanting that I've been boring my audience and really Act I and Act II are the same. I hope not. Gary's about to change, he's going to need to. Sure, he's a stone cold killer to start, but he's going to have to be better at it, and maybe he shouldn't kill everybody he runs into. Just saying.
So there it is. On to Chapter 25, which I think I know what happens to start us off. I'm not sure where it's going to end. That's the fun part.
4 comments:
I'd probably know this if I was paying attention so forgive me if I missed it.
Did you create an outline for this book?
Todd, I have a very rough outline of the book. It's continually changing (as in the first outline had about 30 chapters, right now I'm thinking it'll be closer to 40). There is a basic flow of what I want to happen, and how. There are two main antagonists, while the one is in charge and the other is taking orders, the second is more powerful and will die second. What will happen next is the last straw of Bad Things Happening(tm) to the protagonist, which will mark the beginning of him taking control of his destiny (of which we've only seen glimmerings of in Act II). After all, he'll then have nearly died three times. I think that's enough for him to get it together.
One of the "world building" parts of Act III will show that he isn't the bad boy some people have thought he is (compared to a real bladesman, who at the end of Act II he hires to finish his training) and reiterate just how lucky he's been to survive this far. But his luck points are about to expire.
Since I've know the overall plan of where this is going, it makes the writing a little easier. The outline isn't detailed enough to say, "this chapter this happens, next chapter this happens" but is more about "this needs to happen before this, which then leads to this...".
I'm sure that just like Acts 1 and 2 there are some surprises waiting for me. For the next chapter I know the horrible thing that happens, but not how Gary gets out of it. It'll be fun to see how he does it.
Interesting.
For my last book, I had a detailed outline which helped speed the writing but may have slowed the editing (it changed a great deal).
I'm going to try winging it on the next attempt, though that makes me a bit anxious of lots of blank staring at the screen.
I've tried it both ways and find that a rough outline works best for me.
I can't plot things out in too much detail because that takes the fun out of the writing for me. But if I just go in blind then I do spend most of my time staring at the screen. Or I just make my characters do stuff so they can kill time while I figure out what to do to them next.
Now I make sure I know beginning, middle, end and a couple of happenings in between that get us from one place to another. That has seemed to be working lately. I still get to feel shackle free but also know that I am working toward some event.
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