Thursday, February 27, 2014

Skipping Ahead

Frustrated by my crappy dialogue efforts in chapter 6, today I skipped ahead a few chapters to write a different scene. The writing went well and I completed 500 words, but as I wrote more and more I realize that the scene was highly dependent on Van and Hitomi's relationship and how it developed during the intervening chapters. I mean, I wrote it based on their relationship as I think how it should have progressed to by that point, but as to whether or not they decided to get there or to another direction entirely is dependent on their interactions with each other up to that point, and by chapter 6 they haven't yet made those decisions or even knew these things are coming!

Earlier when I was considering if I should skip ahead, I did think about this possibility. But I was--and am still--unsure if this is A Bad Thing because I am making tons of assumptions about the characters, and the round peg characters will be totally incompatible with the square hole scene. Or if this is A Good Thing since I'll have an idea that the characters should become square pegs and in the intervening chapters they need to do x and y to get there.

What I do know is that I need to keep writing. Not to allow myself an excuse to shrink away from difficult writing situations, but I think at least at this point in writing DS, I should commit any possible scenes and ideas down on paper so they are all there, and then when I have more content I will be able to convert and rewrite to make an actual story.

Well, that's the plan so far, anyway.

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