- Writing Time: 01:50
- Session Word Count: 1677
- Total Word Count: 14491 (13333 par)
Today, my characters went on a journey by train, so I spent some time thinking about trains and their amenities. Is it reasonable to have semi-fancy sleeper cars with private bathrooms on a steampunk steam engine? I guess so. It’s somewhere between the old west and Amtrak, which is quite a bit of space to work in.
Moving the story to a new location without a detailed outline comes with the awkwardness of logistics, getting characters to the places they need to be for the story to continue, while making it all flow nicely. Since I didn’t do much prep, I needed to spend some time expanding the world—not just in landscape, but in history and culture.
So far, they’ve been in a city loosely based on London. Now they’re heading north, with the eventual goal of traveling to some islands off the coast. This new area is loosely based on Northern Ireland, with a few hints at some civil strife that mirrors the history of that area. It’s also a place with a distinctive look that I can use to easily come up with setting descriptions.
The nice thing about this kind of setting shorthand is that it lets me continue writing quickly. I’ve already got a lot of built-in connections and images in my head. The downside is that those connections and images are mostly real world or overused tropes, so I’ll want to go back in revisions and decide how to change the settings and make them more interesting and unique.
NaNoWriMo is a great reminder that you don’t have to be inspired to write. A lot of writing is just putting words on the page, regardless of how you feel. Often, if you come back later, it’s hard to tell what writing came from the “inspired” sessions and which ones were a struggle. I didn’t feel particularly inspired tonight, but I’m happy with my progress.
Words Deferred 