Everybody has an amazing idea, one that will make the greatest novel ever.
That is why the numbers of unpublished novels range in the millions. Most are at the very least a plot-able story of some sort. Some are nothing more than discombobulated nonsense. A few are genuinely original, even fewer still are compelling.
One thing however is true about all good books. They are not just one good idea, they are a plethora of great ideas thrown at you in clever, and intelligent ways.
If you can only come up with one good idea then take heart, for there are always short stories. If you are bound and determined to take your one idea to novel length be prepared, you're going to need a lot of filler material.
Overshadowed had several great ideas (in my humble opinion of course), but it started out as only one. And as my story grew and evolved suddenly the scene which was my initial idea was no longer necessary and was trimmed from the book.
Ideas come in all shapes and sizes, that is common knowledge. However something that is not common knowledge is the process of molding them together into something that draws people in, and holds their interest.
Overshadowed came to me in a dream, when I woke up I was excited and wondering how the story should end. It was similar to the feeling I get when I'm watching an awesome movie and the power goes out halfway through it.
I woke up wondering what was going to happen to the people in my dream. Most notably the young girl who was the inspiration for Angyll (my protagonist), a character you will hear a lot about in the future. So I realized it was up to me to tell their story. So I immediately blundered headfirst into a process I knew nothing about. However through it all my idea remained true. And that was a very special young woman is being chased by an army of monsters with only a small group of people to protect her. That was my seed, a simple one, basic, yet overflowing with potential.
And how did it grow from there? The first thing that compelled me was the girl in my dream. The impression I got was specific; she was of great value. She was in a vehicle, that tells me it was present day. And her companion/protector/driver of the vehicle was a young man of Asian heritage. He became the character of Lee Nguyen who is the other main protagonist of the story. Obviously there are many more characters, but those two are the centerpieces of the Overshadowed story.
The quick little snippet of a dream left me with a character, a setting, and a purpose to fulfill. More than enough for a solid foundation, upon which a novel could be built.
That dream left me with a feeling of urgency for the characters involved. I knew that if I wanted to portray some of that urgency I would need a high stakes plotline. And when it comes to high stakes, none is higher than the fate of the human race. So I decided to put that up for grabs. Next I needed a villain, and like all good villains, he needed an axe to grind. So I found him some incentive for being bad. I also invented another world, but I'll save that discussion when I talk about how I did that.
I also took an idea that has been brewing around in my head since childhood. When I was a kid I heard a story about someone discovering a giant cavern high in the mountains. He found it by stumbling across a stream of air blowing out from the ground. The man knew if air was flowing freely then it had to be coming out of a large space, or a cave at the very least, and turns out, half the mountain is this huge, grand, unexplored cavern. I doubt the story is true, but...
It made me wonder what it would be like if a cavern had been found that was large enough to house a city, and that is where the idea for HomeWorld came from. Which is basically an underground city hidden inside, well, a giant cavern.
All of those ideas (and more) came together to form a shell that I could use. From that point on, I discovered character after character, and made them face diversity after diversity, until I had a very exciting, and satisfying story.
Practical advice for today is word count.
I got pulled into a discussion one day about how many words do you type each time you write. I have heard a few different responses to this inquiry, but all varied from a few hundred, to the unbelievable number of five thousand.
My answer?
Well, I have been tested at 88 wpm (note the smug grin), sooooo in theory I should be able to put down 5280 words in an hour. Since I average about five hours per writing session, I should be able to write 26,400 words a day. Which means I should have finished Overshadowed in a long weekend (it's roughly 130,000 words).
My actual answer was "I don't know". It is a lot more truthful then the tripe I wrote in the paragraph above. My smart-ass retort about the matter was; "100 quality words will get noticed faster than 150,000 words of pure garbage. Which is what Overshadowed would have been had I written it in four days.
Any long project needs milestones to help hold interest and motivation. I just personally do not think that your milestone should be a word count.
I personally track my progress scene-by-scene. I approach my writing with a plan, starting with the outline which is usually the first thing I write for a story. Next I will focus on the area of the outline I feel compelled to write about (structured writing), and finally I will try to capture that scene in its entirety and won't stop until it is done. I am working on writing more flexibly though. Trying to be open to spontaneous inspiration and what not. More about that some other time.
Honestly though, each of you should find motivation however best serves you. And counting your words might be the thing that works for you What I find is, if I focus only on word count the first thing that will happen is me falling behind on my goal. So as I write I will find myself using filler words to help catch up to my "quota." And that will only hurt the quality of my work, and I'll just have to fix it during a later revision.
But that's just me.
'Til next time.
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