Sunday, November 05, 2006

Clickety Clackety

I finally sat down and powered through a scene that's been rolling around in my head for quite some time. I think all the talk about NaNoWriMo has revved me up a bit. 1500 words in a few hours. It also helped to have a few hours of uninterrupted time with no internet connection. The scene lacks a lot of description, it takes place on the muster fields of a medieval castle early on a cold damp morning, but that can easily be slipped in later. The important thing was to get the right character interaction. I think I've gotten it right and I also came up with another minor character that might prove useful down the line. As Uncle Jim says, writing is like playing positional chess. Get your pieces into strong positions and interesting things will develop.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

YOu said the scene had been rolling round in your head for some time. I was thinking that although Uncle Jim recommends you sit down and pound the keys for a couple of hours a day,but as far as I'm concerned there's nothing like taking time out to think out a scene in your head before writing anything down. Lying in bed last thing at night and when I wake up in the morning, going for a solitary long walk, a hot bath, driving to work and back - these are all good times for me to think about how I want a scene to proceed. I keep a notepad and pen handy if I want to write anything down. Then I've actually got something to use when I sit down and stare at the blank screen.