Just a sort of quick, humorous note. I am writing a novel with supernatural creatures in it. It was carefully outlined, and I knew going in pretty much exactly what I was going to write…except…I didn’t know that there was a werewolf in the story.
What happened is simple, and worth noting. I set up a situation in the novel where one of the supporting characters needs something from my protagonist. My notes say that the two are not on the best of terms. What my notes fail to say is…why? Without that knowledge it turned out to be nearly impossible to write about the two meeting for the first time in many years. I needed something … and I found a werewolf named Louis.
Louis isn’t integral to the story except to bind plot elements, but his story was interesting. Almost fascinating. He might, in fact, be worth a DeChance Chronicle of his own one day. The story, which is told in a memory flashback, could be extracted as a short story – something I may consider along the way.
It was also interesting to find that this little intermission wrote smoothly and quickly. I added a good chunk of words to my Nanowrimo total by inserting it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The point of this note isn’t to talk about werewolves, though. It is simply that if you engineer rifts between major characters, or intimate that they have a history, it’s a good idea to consider your novel might call on you to elaborate. This time I got lucky…a werewolf leaped out of my head and filled the gap. Next time I might try being more careful. Then again, maybe not…it really was fun to write.
It’s still not too late to register to read along as I write “Heart of a Dragon,” Now with werewolf…
-Onward! As of last night, just over 17,000 words in five days. No looking back.
-DNW
Written by David Wilson - Visit WebsiteFollow me on Twitter
This same thing happened to me… the rift and elaboration. The werewolves were already present in the novel, but as I was writing yesterday, one of my characters sparked this excellent bit of information into my head about the past that fit perfectly into the plot and created some great fodder for future plotline elaboration. Awesome work, David. 17,000 words in 5 days is AMAZING!
That’s why I love having the good outline in place. It allows me to worry less about the general flow of the story and that frees brain-cells to come up with…well…werewolves…