Day 20

2013 words today, plus a fair amount of revision to previous section -- which doesn't push the word count forward but plugs some of the holes in the plot. Bit disappointed didn't hit thirty-thousand words today -- still 500 short.

I keep having to remind myself to check what each of the characters is doing at any given moment...I get a couple of the leads in dialog and forget that there are a couple of others in the room who may have quite different priorities and motivations. What are they thinking, doing, have to say?

Worst of all, I keep having the hero do this or that, and have to remember that I need to motivate him for these adventures -- why not just say, "On second thought, maybe I should just resign now and do something else," rather than continue to take these outrageous risks. Thankfully, once I thought to put the question to myself, I was able to come up with anwsers and hopefully write more interesting scenes as our hero finds himself constrained by this or that factor into digging himself deeper and deeper into the thickening plot.

Of course the OTHER problem I'm having is a tendency to have the characters say everything they're thinking -- once I've figured out their motive for doing this or that, damn if they don't insist on mentioning it /explaining themselves to each other, or at least the reader. I strongly suspect that I am insulting the reader's intelligence by constantly making everything explicit immediately. So far I only have one scene where the characters figure something out and the reader has to wait three scenes to have it explained. But toning down explicit explanations (or making implicit stuff clearer) is a task for revisions, not NaNoWriMo.

I'll also have to make some decisions about the swearing in the novel at the revision stage. I have some when the characters get upset, but that's a bit of a problem for the SF market where a big chunk of the market is under 12 and book purchases are funded by disapproving parents. further, a lot of common swear words are anachronistic in my future. So, I can either tone the swearing down (somewhat changes the characters) or change it to swear words not currently in our vocabulary (one of the characters uses 'crank' and 'cranking' a lot which sounds a bit rude in context) or just go with the ageless ones. Similarly some of my threat vocabulary seems bit cliched and anachronistic.

On the whole though, still pleased with general direction, quality of the story. Nobody else may care for it, but its the sort of book I would like to read.