Monday 30 June 2014

Couch Progress: The Ladies of Camp NaNo July

Hello there! It's been a while!

I'm pretty sure my last post was some time in September – since then, I've won NaNoWriMo 2013 with about 75k, and spent Camp NaNoWriMo April 2014 trying to type up as many of my handwritten work as possible in order to get it all into the same format. I finished that behemoth of a job on May 6th.

I've also acquired a dog, adopted two more rats (Hattie and Violet) and suffered the loss of one of my oldest rats, Barnaby, earlier this month. She had started to get poorly last November but is at peace now.

My word count for The Great Couch Happening of '69 is currently 279,754. This past few months have been dedicated to planning the next stage of my novel: tackling the three other story arcs that I've decided to work into things. This is what I'll be doing for Camp NaNo July... and it starts tomorrow and I'm absolutely bricking it.

The arc I will be mainly focusing on for this Camp NaNo event concerns a group of characters that I'm collectively referring to as 'the ladies'. At first I was going to have Clarietta go it alone in the book, doing what she does best, but then during NaNo '13 a minor character, Jane, who didn't really have any lines or real appearances in the book, suddenly joined her and I thrust the two of them into the midst of a pretty bizarre 'whodunit' type of arc. Then there was Tessa, floating in and out of people's lives at the whim of the Multiverse; I decided I'd like to give her a permanent place with Clarietta and Jane, making the group a trio.

But something felt a bit unbalanced. I had four main male characters and only three female. I realised then that there was another minor character that I would like to develop; Maggie. So now I have four of each, things feel a lot more equal and I'm getting really excited about the prospect of writing some adventures and dilemmas for these four to get through and forge friendships in.

So far, I've planned the bare bones of their arc, a well as some details about their characters. I have notecards with the important plot points laid out; I prefer the notecard method because it suits my way of writing better. It's more loose, you can move things around easier, add or discard ideas or completely go off the path if need be. After all, there's always editing to weed out the twaddle.

I've not got as much planned as I'd have liked, if I'm honest, but I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll be able to just cast off any doubts and write. Wish me luck, and good luck to anybody else who's taking part!