Step Seven: The Daily Grind (35k and Going Rogue)
When the Outline Fails, and Other Stories of Climbing the Wrong Mountain
"You don't need to worry about progressing slowly.
You need to worry about climbing the wrong mountain."
— James Clear
None of you will be surprised to hear that the outline I so preciously created in opposition to my normal method of writing a novel has failed me.
Maybe you are surprised. If you’ve been following along on this journey writing novel #32 with me, you know that I’ve given my all to the classically defined prep work that most writers go through when they set out to write a new book. I went past my normal concept, synopsis, and 40 Scenes to learn how to develop a full-blown outline using Save the Cat and a few other methods. I was proud. It seemed almost too good to be true. Reader, it was.
The story is still intact, which is a relief. The story is fine, actually, and the end result isn’t changing much at all. The problem stemmed from my main character. This story is told from two perspectives (already an issue that will be resolved; I’m used to many more POVs), and while one character is dark and brooding and challenging and interesting, the other, the one I’ve spent the majority of my time with because it is her story overall, is…none of those things. She is normal. A normal, well-adjusted human on a normal, if slightly exceptional, trajectory.
Normal? She was downright plucky. I don’t write plucky characters. I write deeply disturbed characters for whom manipulation, deceit, even murder are second nature. I write people whose worlds have been devastated and are crawling out of the morass, starting to see the light after eons stuck in the dark. Complicated. Destructive. Designed to make you uncomfortable.
Plucky? Not so much.
So you can understand that I have struggled with her. I love her, but she’s just too…good.
On the surface, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a character being good or plucky. Nancy Drew is plucky, and look where it got her. And it’s been nice, actually, to have someone who wasn’t so damaged to work with. But for me, a young, plucky character can be surprisingly difficult to write. She stymied me. And it wasn’t because of her good-naturedness. It was more profound than that. More problematic.
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