August 04, 2003
Presents for ME?!
The Plot Fairy visited me this morning with all sorts of goodies. She sprinkled my outline with lots of scene and conflict ideas, but unfortunately most of them had to do with the final act of the novel. The act I'm diving into right now is still pretty skeletal, but it's getting better. My characters are starting to tell me exactly what's important to them and what they want to do, which in some ways, makes plotting much much easier.
I very much like the world that I've created here, but I'm finding that I need to fill in a few more basic details. However, the more I think about it, answering some of those questions (like, how does Jack's merry little band survive?) can provide a lot of scenes for the act I'm about to start working on.
I seem to alternate between two states of mind when writing this. For lack of anything better to call them, they're the intuitive state and the construction state. The intuitive state is when the characters take off and I write and write and don't seem to have anything to do with what's actually going on the page, like I'm transcribing. The construction state seems to happen most often when I'm outlining or when I'm plotting out a scene, where it's much more conscious. I'm deliberately weighing bricks of plot and dialogue in my hands, trying to figure out which ones to use, arranging and rearranging them to see how things fit together. I always hated that part before. I'm finding that I'm actually really enjoying it (most of the time) on this project.
I have this vision of my plot in my mind like a great big net. Right now, the space between the weave is kinda loose in places, the holes are big enough for things to slip through. When I have a day like today, where the pieces all start to click into place, I envision that net drawing up, the weave getting pulled tighter and tighter by an unseen hand. I don't know that The Exile's Daughter will ever be woven tight enough to be waterproof, but I'm thinking that even at this point, it's already starting to hold a little water.
