October 26th – 947,024

Yesterday’s critique group through up an interesting question about the amount of help out there for authors looking to construct their characters or their plot, or even, given it was a speculative fiction group, their setting. So, for about an hour last night I went looking on the web to see what I could find.

God knows how, for a real newbie at this lark, how they would be able to sort the wheat from the chaff (sorry for the cliché). I have no idea how they would. I found some useful stuff, I even found something useful to myself (it’s called a beatsheet, and although primarily a screenwriting tool, a number of my friends have been suing it for plot planning. I’d heard the term but not bothered going to look for it, now, I have, and I can see its usefulness. I’m not sure I’ll change what I do, but it’s food for thought. Damn, there goes another cliché. Sorry. I guess I’m getting tired.

Life has intervened today, which is surprising – today was quiet after spending the last couple of days working in the middle of builders thumping and sawing all the way round the house, so I’d anticipated getting a lot of work done. I’ve reverted to being a good boy, returning to my main manuscript and managed 4,609 words, taking me within touching distance of hitting 950k tomorrow and quite probably wrapping that particular story up, somewhere above the 60k mark, which given I’d intended for around 40k (long novella) may well mean there’s a lot to cut at edit – or maybe not. We can always hope.