The End is in Sight

I am running out of steam. I don’t have a handle on how this story ends or where it is going. I am going to take a break for a few days and mull things over. Maybe make a definitive outline before I worry about writing the end. It stands at nearly 30,000 words right now and it is a bare bones draft. I have written at least 15,000 of those words in the past two weeks. it is an incredible leap forward and I finished everything that was already plotted.

Now I will finish the plot in detail, know where everyone is and what they’re doing and what the reader will see. I am excited for the end. It’s going to be action packed.

I’ve been afraid of description lately. Someone once told me to add more dialogue, but now I am ignoring description. Something in me thinks the action will not move if there is description. But the dialogue is becoming redundant because everyone is in the process of finding out information others and the reader already know.

I asked Amanda to help me with story development for the end–she is here and available and we will work in due course. I must acquaint her with the characters and the story. She was very excited when I asked her to help me.

midnight murder

Frank Matowski is dead. All of the characters are connected and I have given away nothing of the plot in the first sentence. I have made it past the first hump–past everything that was already plotted. Now comes the challenge–bringing everyone to the climax, making the villains more evil than they are…not that the heroes are all that good, but everything is relative.

It has always been a challenge to write truly evil characters–it’s almost as if I’m embarrassed to admit what sinister things pop into my mind for these characters to do. None of them are pure evil, though and I get caught up trying to keep everyone human. I think though, that for the first draft, I am going to commit and go balls to the wall (if you’ll pardon the expression) and write everyone the way I feel they should be written. It’s easier to scale back during edits than to develop the character further. It’s a lot of fun, though, dealing with characters who are capable of almost anything, while having all of their actions within the realm of belief.

Settled and Moving

Things have settled again–a great relief, although I am not out of the woods by any means–that will not happen until next year and I am coming to terms with that. Now that I am on sturdier footing, I can begin work again on this project. I have thought about it non-stop every minute I am not working on it. I have decided the best thing to do is to write in sections and then string them together since that is how everything has been coming together in the first place. I am not worrying about masterful description or dialogue. That will come with the edits. I want a skeleton of a novel. I want it to be finished and hten I want to move on. I want this story to come to life and be read by multitudes of unknown people. I am branching far from where Haley and I left off. Characters are changing–situations becoming more real. It’s no holds barred in the little world of Annie & Greyson.

Dear Brendan Molloy,

Dear Brendan Molloy,

AHHHHHHH!!! Why do you do this to me?

Love and adoration (maybe),

-Heatherlyn-

The Woes of Brendan Molloy

Tonight, I will write the first peek at Brendan Molloy completely alone with his work. I am excited for how it will turn out because historically, Haley and I have had a tough time defining him, but through no goading from either of us, he has truly come into his own.

The first scene with him alone, well, I don’t want to give it away, but he is behind in his work. Haley, I believe, will love it. It’s going to be short and sweet as I’ve decided to make the chapters as short as necessary. I am currently reading a book where the longest chapter so far has been only 10 pages. It makes for much more enjoyable reading than trudging through 50-70 pages of a section. There will be much bouncing from character to character, but I am trying to keep it within reason and necessity.

The Big Black X

Tonight, during a rather big breast cancer event, I began applying the big black X to pages of old material. I believe I highlighted only 3 paragraphs total to keep.

I am glad that the story and characters have developed far beyond what we began with.

The Beginning

Well, this is the beginning of the blog, but it is not the beginning of the process. Here at The Gaslight Rogue, I will endeavor to document my journey through writing my first novel. The story and characters already has a long history, which began in 2000 one summer with Haley Henslee.

Since then, the characters have morphed and the original storyline has all but been tossed aside, but now it is ready to be written from a mature writer’s standpoint. The amount of research I have done is staggering and I have become more familiar with turn-of-the-century New York City than I ever imagined necessary.

Vital Stats

Setting: New York City, Late 1800’s-Early 1900’s

The Characters (shortlist, no description):

Greyson Marconi, Annie McCain, Frank Matowski, Aaron Blackburn, Maggie McCartney, Brendan Molloy, Tucker Finnegan, Abraham Soriano, Ulechka, Katya, Aleksandr Fedorov, Jenny & Eugene, Ricochet Anderson, many incidental.

Status: Six sections written. Character profiles mostly completed. Plotted generally to the end.

Deadlines: June 28th, 2008–full general plot complete

August 1st, 2008–Complete first draft (soft deadline)

The tag paragraph is finished. It was written several years ago during one of our attempts at writing this story. I will post it soon.

It is important to note that since inception, Haley has been an integral part of getting everything off the ground and running. She has since decided to withdraw from the project, fearing that she may slow it down. It was amicable and I have been given full usage and free reign over everything she has written and all of her characters. She is still very much involved in the process and I look to her for guidance whenever I find myself in need.