This is actually the first Christmas/New Year holiday when I've had any quiet time to write.
As my Dorset novel is going to be getting attention this year, I decided to repeat the useful planning I did earlier in 2011 for my novella- character sheets and chapter outlines.
It's not that I don't have this information, its just not in one concise form that's easy to refer to- it's on bits of paper, in notebooks and the synopsis and first three chapters.
So I decided to start with getting all my character sheets together, and actually completed about three hours-before the computer got taken over for editing photos by my OH...
I've been using the Character Fact List from 'The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing' and found it really helpful for my novella characters.
So knowing my novel characters still had weak spots, it was surprising to realise that over the last twelve months a lot of my hero's grey areas had finally emerged from the gloom, and I now only had minor points to clarify.
My hero Marcus, has always been much clearer than his love interest, as so often my hero is the first character to step forward when I have an idea. But I think that's just how characters develop for me.
As for my chapter outlines, I do think I'll need to jiggle a few bits about, as aspects of my plot have developed in an interesting- and probably more exciting- way.
(I used to be amazed how a writer could have the whole story in their mind before they began writing, but now I can see how it works.)
There are aspects of the plot that I haven't resolved yet, but if it works like it did with similar aspects in the novella, then I'm not too worried about sorting them when I get to them.
On Wednesday I hope to have the comments back for the synopsis and first three chapters of this novel- which won the NWC Romance Novel trophy in December.
I'm prepared for the bad bits as well as the good...
Carol Bevitt's blog on her writing and inspirations, along with occasional literature related news...