Real Life Puts Me Behind On Plotting – The Climb #616

Friday 30^th October 2020

Today has been a day sorting out some real life things, which means all my writing time has been eaten up and I’ve not made a lot of progress with the plot.

Still, I’ve had plenty of time to think, and thinking IS working.

I think I know what the secondary plot is. It’s basically the secondary character’s arc and whilst fairly simple, it will help enhance the stakes / conflicts on the protagonist. I just need to ensure I have the various beats mapped out.

The big thing that’s stopping me from having the novel solidify in my head is location. This story takes place in the real world and uses a number of real locations. I want them to be diverse and exotic… so I’m thinking: somewhere with desert, somewhere with snow. But as to where? I don’t know. Given the world can’t really safely travel right now, I’m feeding on my own wanderlust to try and come up with locations.

I have a worry about the start of the novel. In the model I’m using, the protagonist starts in a ‘normal’ world before they get their ‘call to adventure’. However, they must first reject that call before accepting it. Given I’m using this NaNoWriMo to experiment with heavy structure and organisation, I’m going to have them reject the call first.

BUT, I think this drags out the start. My gut is saying to get into the action. My gut tells me that every structure is a guide and can be broken. But that’s not what this NaNoWriMo experiment is about.

So I’ve been trying to think if there’s another way to do this… a more “exciting way” that has them leave the normal world behind. At worst, I can always cut it down if I ever come to editing / redrafting this. But I do find myself fighting my own nature constantly on this.

I feel like I’ve gone from feeling ahead to feeling behind. I’ve got some commitments tomorrow and I HAVE to get the prep all finished. I have the primary plot arcs to finish, the secondary arcs to completely do, and locations to sort out.

Maybe then, I’ll have a functional plot. Ordinarily, I’d have given myself another week and still have been happy at the speed, but I have to start writing tomorrow.

Remind me why I do this to myself again?