Disorder

I've decided that I have to be stricter about keeping to plot outlines, because my last story was a little disorganised. So I'm spending today and tomorrow working on the characters and plots for the next three stories.

I worked on the plots and ideas for each story back in January, and since then I've been selecting the ideas that I'm most confident with. So it wasn’t a shock when I discovered that I did the least plot and character work on the remaining stories, mainly because I struggled with these ideas the most. It's similar to when I would reach the end of a project at work, and discover that I actually had more to do than I thought - because I'd left the most complex parts until last, hoping that the rest of the content would shed some light on these seemingly incomprehensible sections.

This could be the case now, as my writing style has changed - I now have a better idea of what plots and types of characters fit best into the style of this novel. I also found that the plots of two stories were too similar so I had to redo one of them.

At this late stage, I'm hoping that if I have a good think about the last three stories and really do a decent, detailed job on plotting each, they will be in better shape than the last two I've written.

Getting ideas

I only managed 1500 words today – normally a below average day but that was the amount of words that brought my seventh story to a natural end! Now I have only three more stories to write until I finish the first draft of my novel.

I was speaking to my friend the Filmmaker yesterday. He's taking a break from writing scripts at the moment and he's found that he doesn't construct scenes in his head anymore, while he would get loads of ideas when went about his day when he was writing regularly.

I found this interesting, because hardly ever think about my novel outside of writing it. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not inspired, (scary thought – let’s put that aside) or because I try not to as it can get me worked up. Last night I found myself creating dialogue and imaging scenes, and I had to stop because there was no way that I'd get to sleep at a decent hour if I kept down that road.

When I do let myself think about the story I'm working on outside of writing hours, I tend to enjoy it, mainly because it all seems fantastically interesting, amusing and inspiring in my head. (My psyche is very modest.) However, when I sit down to write it I always end up moving in another direction, or it doesn't quite fit. Strange really.

It's actually easier to plan the story and dialogue while I'm actually writing, as when I need to I'll pause, look into space, hopefully get an idea, then continue. The flipside of this is slightly unpolished dialogue and weird twists, so I hope that my editing skills will prove to be up to the now mighty job. Dialogue needs to be either funny, quirky or clever, not as literal as I'm writing at the moment.

(By the way I think about my novel the most when I’m in the shower – I’d rather not examine that fact too closely though.)