Time for another installment of "Tales From a Roving Mind". This week I have no idea what I'm going to talk about. What you find after the jump, is going to be as much of a surprise to me as it will be to you. Let's see what kind of shit I pull out of my ass together. Meet you after the break.
Here we are. So, what's up?
That's good.
I've reached a bit of a lull in my story. I didn't have anything planned out with it. The basic set up, which was held over from the original story, made up part of chapter 1. Chapter 2, which is probably 40 pages long so far, and everything that comes next is being written on the fly.
I'm doing this almost as a string of conscious thing. The story is being written as a 1st person narrative in present tense. So you're reading the thoughts of the main character as things are happening. This allows me to tell you the story without having to gussy it up. It's a very raw form of writing, but it works for me.
Since I have nothing planned I'm just going where my mind takes me. And it's taken be so far off course, that this story can no longer use the title of 'Smoke'. That was a dark noir story, this isn't. I need to come up with a new title.
The names, however will stay the same. My star is still "Hazard Jones" and his secretary is still "Angel Desiree". Aside from those names and the case covered in the first chapter, nothing between the two stories is the same.
I didn't plan for that to happen. In fact I have to go back and rewrite the first 10 pages (I'll re-write the whole thing, to make it flow better.) dramatically. The mood is all wrong at the beginning. It's too dark and depressing. This is becoming more a romp. A violent and still dark romp, but a romp none the less. I have never said, thought, or typed the word 'romp' so many times before. I like it. Romp. Romp. Romp.
Sorry.
As I was saying, nothing is planned and now I find myself in that lull. I've introduced a new character I don't have a grasp on, and weighed myself down with some unnecessary baggage. I could scrap about 30 pages of story and rework them but I like what I have. So I'm just going to see where this takes me.
Which means, I have to work through the lull. It isn't easy. Getting my 1,000 words (My daily goal.) has been a little difficult these past few days. Especially on Monday. I didn't feel great Sunday night so I went to bed early. This was a risk. I write right before I go to sleep. I find that late night is the best time for me to write. That night I couldn't stay awake and so I went to sleep without writing a single word.
That meant that before I fell asleep on Monday night, I had to hit 2,000 words. I did it but it wasn't easy. I was worried that a missed day would spell the end of this high I've been on. Maybe, I should give myself more credit. Or maybe (I'm about to go on a tangent here.) I never had the right material. Or I had the right material at the wrong time. This may just be the only time I've ever hit the hammer squarely on the head. Who knows?
I've tried writing this story, the story this used to be, before but I didn't know where to take it. Actually, let me tell you about the story. "Smoke" was going to be my real story. I mean 'real'. As in down to earth. Nothing crazy or fantastic just a gritty detective story. It was going to be dark, harsh, an all around bitter pill.
The idea I had was a simple one. A detective who has seen exactly what his city has to offer and has become numb to it. The city is never named. When I first started this story, over 15 years ago, I had just read Sin City so I had that in my head. The way I see the city is a mix between New York circa 1983, Chicago in the 30’s and modern day Detroit. So the worst an American City can be. The other main character was the secretary who is the only good person, as far as the detective knows, left in the city. She is his guiding light. He loves her because of that but also hates her. He hates that she remains clean in the city when he could not. (That is one of the things that’s changed. This Hazard Jones doesn’t have that hatred.)
The client arrives, a woman of course, and hires the Detective to find her boyfriend. The boyfriend was a con man who stole everything and ran. The Detective tracks him down and reunites the two.
That was all I had. In the original story the boyfriend ends up killing the client right outside the Detective's office. He doesn’t care though, since he already got paid.
I started with that idea. I knew I would have to stretch it out and add to it. What I have started to become it's own thing. That original story was maybe 6,000 words. So it's not surprising that stretching it so much has changed it till it was no longer the same genre let alone story.
Now I find myself in this lull, a low point in the story where the reader can catch their breath, and I'm trudging through. I want to move on to the next interesting bit. Follow up on the cases Hazard is working on and maybe introduce a third.
My goal is for this story to cover 1 (working) week in the life of this character. That's 5 maybe 6 days, I can see it stretching to include Saturday, so adding another case isn't out of the question. I even have an idea that I’ve been scratching at. I don't know if it'll end up in this or not, but it's kicking around in my skull.
This is what makes this lull so frustrating. Since I don't know where this story is going I have been entertained writing it. I've enjoyed it, as much as I can ever enjoy writing, and that's a rare thing. But man, the last few days have been boring.
I probably have two or three more days of this before I can move on to something more interesting. Nothing to do about it. Some people can jump all around the story and not lose their rhythm, I can't. I go from point A to point B until I hit point Z. Any other way and I get lost and start throwing numbers in the mix.
Alright, that's enough of my ramblings today. Next week I'm going to talk about 'voices'. That is getting the right vocal mannerisms to define and differentiate characters. That would have been a much better thing to talk about today, actually. Oh well. See you then.
Wait, I almost forgot! I’m up to 46,217 words which is 80 pages. I'm am very proud of myself.
That's good.
I've reached a bit of a lull in my story. I didn't have anything planned out with it. The basic set up, which was held over from the original story, made up part of chapter 1. Chapter 2, which is probably 40 pages long so far, and everything that comes next is being written on the fly.
I'm doing this almost as a string of conscious thing. The story is being written as a 1st person narrative in present tense. So you're reading the thoughts of the main character as things are happening. This allows me to tell you the story without having to gussy it up. It's a very raw form of writing, but it works for me.
Since I have nothing planned I'm just going where my mind takes me. And it's taken be so far off course, that this story can no longer use the title of 'Smoke'. That was a dark noir story, this isn't. I need to come up with a new title.
The names, however will stay the same. My star is still "Hazard Jones" and his secretary is still "Angel Desiree". Aside from those names and the case covered in the first chapter, nothing between the two stories is the same.
I didn't plan for that to happen. In fact I have to go back and rewrite the first 10 pages (I'll re-write the whole thing, to make it flow better.) dramatically. The mood is all wrong at the beginning. It's too dark and depressing. This is becoming more a romp. A violent and still dark romp, but a romp none the less. I have never said, thought, or typed the word 'romp' so many times before. I like it. Romp. Romp. Romp.
Sorry.
As I was saying, nothing is planned and now I find myself in that lull. I've introduced a new character I don't have a grasp on, and weighed myself down with some unnecessary baggage. I could scrap about 30 pages of story and rework them but I like what I have. So I'm just going to see where this takes me.
Which means, I have to work through the lull. It isn't easy. Getting my 1,000 words (My daily goal.) has been a little difficult these past few days. Especially on Monday. I didn't feel great Sunday night so I went to bed early. This was a risk. I write right before I go to sleep. I find that late night is the best time for me to write. That night I couldn't stay awake and so I went to sleep without writing a single word.
That meant that before I fell asleep on Monday night, I had to hit 2,000 words. I did it but it wasn't easy. I was worried that a missed day would spell the end of this high I've been on. Maybe, I should give myself more credit. Or maybe (I'm about to go on a tangent here.) I never had the right material. Or I had the right material at the wrong time. This may just be the only time I've ever hit the hammer squarely on the head. Who knows?
I've tried writing this story, the story this used to be, before but I didn't know where to take it. Actually, let me tell you about the story. "Smoke" was going to be my real story. I mean 'real'. As in down to earth. Nothing crazy or fantastic just a gritty detective story. It was going to be dark, harsh, an all around bitter pill.
The idea I had was a simple one. A detective who has seen exactly what his city has to offer and has become numb to it. The city is never named. When I first started this story, over 15 years ago, I had just read Sin City so I had that in my head. The way I see the city is a mix between New York circa 1983, Chicago in the 30’s and modern day Detroit. So the worst an American City can be. The other main character was the secretary who is the only good person, as far as the detective knows, left in the city. She is his guiding light. He loves her because of that but also hates her. He hates that she remains clean in the city when he could not. (That is one of the things that’s changed. This Hazard Jones doesn’t have that hatred.)
The client arrives, a woman of course, and hires the Detective to find her boyfriend. The boyfriend was a con man who stole everything and ran. The Detective tracks him down and reunites the two.
That was all I had. In the original story the boyfriend ends up killing the client right outside the Detective's office. He doesn’t care though, since he already got paid.
I started with that idea. I knew I would have to stretch it out and add to it. What I have started to become it's own thing. That original story was maybe 6,000 words. So it's not surprising that stretching it so much has changed it till it was no longer the same genre let alone story.
Now I find myself in this lull, a low point in the story where the reader can catch their breath, and I'm trudging through. I want to move on to the next interesting bit. Follow up on the cases Hazard is working on and maybe introduce a third.
My goal is for this story to cover 1 (working) week in the life of this character. That's 5 maybe 6 days, I can see it stretching to include Saturday, so adding another case isn't out of the question. I even have an idea that I’ve been scratching at. I don't know if it'll end up in this or not, but it's kicking around in my skull.
This is what makes this lull so frustrating. Since I don't know where this story is going I have been entertained writing it. I've enjoyed it, as much as I can ever enjoy writing, and that's a rare thing. But man, the last few days have been boring.
I probably have two or three more days of this before I can move on to something more interesting. Nothing to do about it. Some people can jump all around the story and not lose their rhythm, I can't. I go from point A to point B until I hit point Z. Any other way and I get lost and start throwing numbers in the mix.
Alright, that's enough of my ramblings today. Next week I'm going to talk about 'voices'. That is getting the right vocal mannerisms to define and differentiate characters. That would have been a much better thing to talk about today, actually. Oh well. See you then.
Wait, I almost forgot! I’m up to 46,217 words which is 80 pages. I'm am very proud of myself.
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