My Journey To The Wattys 2020

Day 210

As a writer, it's important to know when it's time to take a step back, or to pivot. Some call it writer's block. I don't, because I rarely run into moments where I don't have anything to write. I always have at least half a dozen projects sitting around in various states of completion, which means that regardless of how I feel about any particular story, I have no excuse for not writing.

Except for those days when I just need a break. Yep. This past weekend was one of those. I ended up doing very little writing and, in fact, I spent more time reading than writing. In a way, it's nice to just take that step back and not worry so much about getting writing done.

This is also especially true at this stage. The last week I've spent working on a bit more of a cohesive outline, along the lines of how I outlined Intervention. I've found that it seems to work well for me, with the main point really being that I'm able to connect the dots at least to some extent between the beginning, the middle and the end that I came up with the week before. In essence, I took the 1,000+ word synopsis I wrote and broke it into pieces. Whether we call those pieces chapters or scenes can be up for debate. When I look back at the Snowflake method, this fits roughly with step 4: the expanded synopsis. The difference is that instead of being a one-page synopsis, it's a one-page synopsis split into 30 parts (or so).

Last night I finally put in the final scene and I'm feeling pretty good at where the story is at. I feel like I've gotten to know my characters quite a bit better, what their motivations and fears are and where they'll end up by the end of the story. There are a few aspects in the middle I still need to work through, but I feel like I can now go back to some of the other aspects of the Snowflake method and refresh a thing or two.What does that mean?

First of all, I need to take the existing five-sentence summaries and tweak them. This is an important lesson: your story isn't set in stone at this point. It's evolving as it develops. The exercise these past few days has shown me that the characters I initially thought I had differed from what I imagined, and as a result, the story is also a little different. I need to document this.I've also gotten to know my characters quite a bit more, which means that it's time to dig into their backgrounds and story arcs a bit more. I'm actually excited about doing this exploration this week. Last week, it didn't feel like I knew enough about them to do that.

That is my goal for the rest of this week. Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll be even more invested in my characters and begin to see the story from the various perspectives. Plus, I get to decide if one of the supporting characters is going to be a humble, nice guy or a stuck-up megalomaniac. That's always fun, right? Especially when it could go either way in the story.

If you're plotting anything for the Wattys, how are you doing?