Thoughts on Development

I've been feeling a real struggle lately, but I think I am coming out of it. Plotting for my NaNoWriMo submission has been a nightmare and the clock is ticking. But I'm having a breakthrough. Also, it's good to get these issues out of the way now so when NaNoWriMo comes around (OMG ONLY 1 WEEK) I won't have to spend all this time dinkin' around with it. Which is good. But through all of this, I've been having fun based on the fact that my characters are growing themselves.

For example, I think two of my characters are falling for each other. When did that happen? There is no place for love in my story. They are journeying and fighting for their lives! It just doesn't make sense. But I can feel it when I work out the plot. Whether it actually comes up in the writing, I don't know. But I do know for sure that on my end as the author they fell for each other. Something similar happened with one of my characters. Last night, while I was working on plot point #9, I had this random idea that my story needed two sweet old ladies who are sisters and have been living together since they were younger. They are now the aunts of one of my characters and raised this person after his/her mother died.

Isn't it funny how things sort of just fall into place when you are writing?

I think I have been approaching my novel in a way that is similar to a movie. Is this good or bad? I'm not entirely certain. I see the story develop in my mind as though it were a movie and try to relay that information in the form of words. Sometimes it's helpful because I can see everything in my mind as if it were real and write what I see. But at the same time, I wonder if this bogs me down sometimes. Or maybe that I'm not focusing on the right descriptions. I don't know. Haha, I DO know, however, that this will be good for NaNoWriMo. Why? Because I have 30 days to write 50,000 words. And since I have not written this many words for one story in about... 10 years, I think it would be helpful.

Yesterday, I was reading an article about reasons your manuscript could get rejected by agents and one reason mentioned gimmicks. This lead me to wonder if my approach to Inoculation is gimmicky. The way I have it set up right now, each character leads to another character and the story is told from their point of view (3rd person) until they meet up. I imagine this would be considered gimmicky. It has a very movie-style feel to it as well. However, I feel that this is how it needs to be told. It flows, it's fun, it's interesting. I don't think I even have a single protagonist. If I had to guess, I would say that Nea and Logan are the two main protagonists... but what about Bridget and David? Or Ingrid? Or the Weyland boys? Secondary.

I think I have done enough musing, though, for now. My next entry may be about inspiration and music. I know a lot of people make playlists and I think I'd like to muse on this.