Friday, 1 July 2011

High on Emotion

A lot of you will know that I am currently taking part in Sally Quillford’s 80k 80 day challenge and doing rather well. Today my total stands at 72,817 words with 18 days to go. It has been quite a roller coaster ride, but I have made myself write at least 1000 words a day.

Today I was trying to coalesce my plot so I decided to try some “emotional walk throughs”. I had more or less decided how the plot was going to flow, but today I wrote first from my heroine’s point of view and then from my hero’s, going through each plot stage and writing about the emotional reactions of these two characters. It proved a very worthwhile exercise as it enabled me to eliminate some red herring plot lines and to be very clear about what each chapter is trying to achieve. I wrote over 1800 words too!
I am now getting to the stage where this book is fully formed. It is the furthest I have got in any one manuscript and it feels good. Maybe I can at last see the attraction of doing this full time. I have almost a hunger to finish and start editing. The last 8,000 words of the challenge are going to be concentrated on the “thin” scenes. Then I think I will polish a few short stories and send them out, before editing working title ‘Rosie’s Mystery Man’ or ‘Legacy of the Past.’
So I am high on emotion this afternoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_t5WCw0UE
Have you any tips for us about techniques which changed your view of your work?
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9 comments:

  1. Sarah Tokeley1 July 2011 at 15:22

    No magic tips, just huge congratulations on your word count and, more importantly, the fact that the finishing line is in sight for you :)

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  2. Pauline Barclay1 July 2011 at 16:48

    Congratulations and glad everything is going so well. x

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  3. Kiru Taye1 July 2011 at 20:00

    Wow, Morton. I can say is keep going. The end in in sight. Well done. :o))

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  4. Morton S Gray2 July 2011 at 06:35

    Thanks to all. Strange how even though I have written so many words and got further to a complete novel than I ever have, it only feels like a beginning!

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  5. Teresa F Morgan3 July 2011 at 19:45

    (opps I realised what I did there and it didn't post my first comment... forgot to put the word in - so I'll try again!)

    Well done, Morton. You're doing great. Make sure you do put it away for a bit though once you've finished. Get some distance from it; it will make the editing easier as you're not so 'close' to it. Start another project of some sort in the meantime... don't stop writing! (Maybe Sally needs to come up with another challenge).

    Good luck! I'm so behind on this challenge!

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  6. Lacey Devlin4 July 2011 at 12:27

    Congrats, Morton! That's a fantastic word count :-)

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  7. Flowerpot5 July 2011 at 09:40

    You are doing amazingly well Morton. Keep going!

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  8. Anonymous6 July 2011 at 11:23

    I love it when you get so involved in your writing that time flies by and words hit the page in great piles! Excellent. Sounds great!

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  9. Morton S Gray7 July 2011 at 11:27

    Blogged today about my learning points from this challenge. http://bit.ly/qzemdW

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