Friday, November 21, 2008

Sometimes your NaNo characters hijack your brain...

Often while in the midst of NaNo or working on any story, I have moments when I allow my characters to get too close and occasionally take over. My walk to work turns from thinking about my life to thinking about the characters, things they might say or bits of narration.

Then the hijacking begins.

I have a sudden urge to speak as Olivia and respond as Artemus or one of the Orvilles. I devise witty bits of narration for scenes I have yet to write. When they win, I have no choice but to say their words out loud or mouth them. And even when I fight, the facial expressions they might express in the scene playing out in my head, will appear on my own face.

This can be rather problematic, because people might think you're crazy. But this is also the sign that something is finally clicking. And nothing clicked more than when I stopped on my walk home, pulled out my notebook and proceeded to write over 1,000 words for a scene that just popped up in my mind. And it didn't stop there. Twice more, I stopped on the street, found a piece of paper and had to write down that bit of dialogue or prose before I could continue on my way.

But in the end it paid off because I have reached 42K. So hooray!

Unfortunately, my story is far from ending, so I know I need to work really hard these next 10 days to reach 100k or at least 80k before NaNoWriMo ends.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails