I am chaos. The current draft I have is about three quarters of the way done (I write fairly short books), and last night I had a lightbulb moment that I think will get me through the rest of the draft.
This always happens to me right when I give up on the idea that it might happen. In my first book, the main baddie didn’t reveal herself to me until I was at this stage, and a very important side character key to the plot and story, didn’t show up in any real sense until I was 60% of my way through drafting A Mean Piece of Water.
In both of those cases, however, the seed had already been planted by my brain and the characters sort of plopped into place like puzzle pieces. Drastically changing the major plot points, but without any loss to my world building and character development.
All this to say, EVERYONE WRITES DIFFERENTLY. So much of writing is something that can be learned and honed and taught. But figuring out the combination of skills that will work for you can’t be. It’s trial and error. It’s google searching a thousand different ways to make an outline. It’s throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I was throwing baby dragons at walls for almost a full year before I offhandedly threw “swamp monster” and now here we are. Those poor baby dragons. I’m sure they’re okay somewhere.
I’ve been stalled out for a few weeks. Largely because I was working summer camps, finishing up our first Horns and Rattle publication, but also because I hadn’t had the “oh, that makes sense” character/plot point pop into my head.
So today, I woke up and after a heated battle with my printer, made the first print out of “Cryptid shit” (I’m garbage at naming books in a timely manner). Let’s go!