Next year

So last night I thought about what I want to do next year (novella series) what genre I’d like to play with next (fantasy) and started brainstorming ideas for it.

I had stayed away from fantasy due to the amount of world-building I thought would be involved, but decided to work on something more character based and fill in the details later [a bit like how I am handling the historic elements in my current book].

Still, as I would not be writing this for another 8 months, that will give me lots of time to brainstorm and create a skeleton.

Things I wish I’d seen earlier.

Have to go back to the Lysander, the SOE stopped using the Halifax in ’42….

Futurians: how awesomely perfect are they? I feel like I need to work them in somehow. The 39 World’s Fair is all over the other book. Kind of early though, wonder if he could get in.

His father is so a Theosophist. Not unknown in that social class, would put him in contact with someone from downtown like his mother (who is more of the Goldman school). I like the idea of the mother bringing the rabble-rousing radical communism, and the father bringing a tempering of pacifism and a spiritual overview to them.

Lastly: it’s odd considering that this was, in no way, the inspiration for the characters–but there was more of me and my sister in the scene i wrote about Gene and Reed than anything else I’ve written.

Slump!

Only made it into chapter 3 with my revisions so far. The hardest part at the moment is not to charge ahead excitedly.

How much is it appropriate to hold back, save for later? How much should be done in the moment?

I don’t just want to keep writing the beginning over and over again.

Still, lots of work started for November as well. I’m hoping that will reduce the amount of pre-revision work (but not restrict me from exploring).

Editing and planning….

CampNaNoWriMo

I’ve started the editing process. I set up a plan which vaguely goes like this:
Prep:

  • cut all chapters into scenes
  • mark thematic elements
  • character lists
  • mark point of view
  • short research as necessary

Draft 2

  • Scene organization
  • place scenes in structurs [start with major ones]
  • placeholders for insertions
  • write missing scenes as go through draft from beginning to end

Draft 3

  • Scene arc
  • treat scenes as small stories
  • review internal scene integrity
  • full rewrite, beginning to end

Draft 4

Fact Checking

Draft 5 and onward

Word-level revision

The plan is to get through draft two in September and then three in October. Once that’s done I’ll have a reading draft to show to some initial readers to see what they think overall. The last two+ drafts could take a year. It’s hard to work too much on that in advance.

At any rate, this will free me up for:

NaNoWriMo 2011

Generally, I’ve been what in NaNo they call a pantser—that is, I do everything by the seat of my pants. This year I want to try to write from an outline. Generally this kills it for me, but I am hoping it won’t tank my November draft entirely. Also, one of the characters in my draft from last year—well, his backstory kind of took over into its own story, and I’d like to run with it.