Shoring up the foundations

I am reworking Blood of the Mist. Not rewriting it, not doing revisions. Reworking it. From the beginning. Sigh…

It is necessary. The story needs it. This is a really good story idea, so it deserves everything I can put into it. But there’s a lot of the work I’ve done so far that is going to get thrown out. Well, probably just tucked away in a box somewhere, but it will be thrown out of the story.

Hard as that is, I can feel that it’s the right thing to be doing. I really need more depth in my planning, more knowledge about my characters and their motivations, more of a vision of my world. I didn’t spend nearly enough time doing the pre-writing stuff. I was getting ready for NaNoWriMo, so I was in a rush, especially because I didn’t start planning until mid-October. Definitely not enough time. And so here I am, practically starting over because of my rush job last Fall.

It’s really okay, though. All of the things I’ve written so far are useful, even if they don’t end up in the final version. They’ve led me closer to knowing what the story is going to be. I have a clearer idea of what the story needs. This is all good stuff, so I really can’t consider what I’ve done so far as wasted time. But it is time to move forward again.

Right now, I am using some of the exercises out of Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (one of the writing tools I bought with my stimulus check) to help me delve more deeply into my characters and my plot layers. I think working through these, taking the time to actually do the exercises instead of just reading through a few of them, is going to lead me to a much better story, so even though I am a little frustrated, what I am doing now is going to end up being time well spent. Now, I think I’ll get back to spending it.