Type, Type, Type...
Having a work day today. The other night I had a neat break-through on one of the earlier scenes in Dangerous City, Dark Skyway. Oddly, the idea was the combined result of me watching The Shield (Mike has been working his way through Season 3 on DVD) and taking a shower. The problem was that I'd had an important character arrive offscreen, so to speak (as in, not "in scene"). I knew it wasn't right, and I could hear the voice of my old professor nagging "write in scene, write in scene, lazy lazy" in my ear. But I couldn't figure out how I wanted her meeting up with the rest of the characters to go. So as I'm watching The Shield, it occurred to me that another of my characters could do with a real gritty Shield-type interrogation, so we can see what kind of a guy he is.
I have this weird thing where I get amazing writing ideas in the shower. So five minutes later I get in the shower and it totally hits me what's going to happen, where the scene will take place, and who's going to be there. Because where my interrogation will happen is where my first character already is. On the same evening. And thus a missing chunk of novel that I thought was rather awkward in the first draft falls into place. Argh. Am I on the second draft yet? Can I write that, if I've written a novel that has chunks missing? I think I can. I don't know. I don't know enough about "novelling." If I was writing a short story, I'd call the original burst of writing that has a discernible beginning, middle, and end a first draft. And I would still be adding scenes. So OK. We'll say that it's a second draft. But not a final draft. It actually needs at least 10,000 more words, since I cut stuff out and it's back down to being short again. I really need to pound it into my head that I promised (myself) to be done by August.
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