Ah, the lead-up to writing a new novel. Something that is, if you will excuse the obvious pun, quite novel for me. Normally I’m 90% pantser, 10% planner, but this time I am aiming for closer to a 60/40 split. I think it’s important for a heist that the plot and all the beats hit exactly at the right time and point towards the “surprising yet inevitable” ending that I already have somewhat fleshed out in my mind.
But for this particular story, I’ve already roughed out a bunch of tech for warships and starfighters and stuff like that which will, in all probability, have nothing to do with the novel. I don’t think any of it (except for maybe the ending) will actually take place in space. It’s going to take place in the city at the base of a space elevator (ooh, I should name it… I think “Beanstalk” is probably my favourite name for a space elevator ever, but it is firmly taken by the good folks responsible for the “Netrunner” IP) and in the city hall of that city. Or possibly one of the big, fancy hotels… a nod towards the occupation of Paris, when the government was housed in hotels around the city. Anyway, I can figure that out later.
But at some point you (or in this case, I) have to stop crafting a world and just start writing. And normally for me that’s shortly after naming the protagonists and giving them basic physical traits (which I normally don’t mention in the book itself), and getting some concept of what the antagonists are, and then, bam, fingers on keyboard. This time it’s a bit more… but that’s okay! My novel notes are always living documents that are updated as they go along… in fact, it was one of my favourite things about Scrivener, when I used it to write stories, that you could easily track plot, character points, and all that independently within the document.
Unfortunately, actually using Scrivener was a bit of a nightmare for producing books… for me. I’m sure others out there use it very effectively! But not I.
Anyway, I just figured out what the heroes are going to steal, and I am super proud of myself because it is really clever. Yay! Okay, back to work for me!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!