This morning was also productive. I've got a grand total of 5,718 words, which is another 2,676 today.

The plot structure is moving more slowly than than I had feared. My biggest worry was running out of plot before I got to 50,000 words, but the plot is trundling along fine and shows no sign of running out at all. Indeed, surprising things have been happening that make me go "Eh?" since I don't know why they are a good idea and make things oddly difficult for the main character.

As for characters, I have a Go master named Keith, and a native American gun freak named Johnny Red Cloud. My main character (the narrator) has a nasty habit of dissing a lot of the things I care about, so no Mary Sue there¹. There is another character called Mary who my MC is entranced by, but who is fundamentally unattainable.

I am tempted to go back and rewrite some of the more problematic plot developments, but I am going to try very hard to resist this and stick to things as they flow. They are likely to be more interesting that way.

And I'm still ahead of goal. Cool.

[1] a Mary Sue is a character who is very obviously inserted into a story as an proxy for the author, who is perfect in every way, who ends up liked by everybody and hated by nobody. The usual male equivalent is a Gary Stu, but Mary Sue is more well known.

Posted by Dunx at November 2, 2004 11:38 AM