As I'm sure all of you are aware by
now, I'm a planner. Not just a casual planner, either. I plan my
books longer than I write them. (For those of you thinking that's
not saying much, I do spend about a month on planning, so that's
something, right?)
Anyway, because I spend so much time
planning, I never expect my books to hold too many surprises. I know
that I'll get some, I just don't expect them to be too big, or
noteworthy. And I'm okay with that, honestly. I almost prefer not
having the surprises. It makes the writing easier, because I'm not
sitting there wondering why this character is acting that way, or
whether that other character is important or not.
So, I started to write the first book I
have planned out for NaNo this year. (Stolen Magick is a YA set in a
school that teaches young Arcanists how to control their magick,
which presents more as abilities than typical magic scenarios. This
school also accepts humans, and the two groups, which aware of each
other, and even mingling in occasional classes, are kept mostly
separate. Phaedra joins the school after her mother dies.
Originally she is though human, but eventually she discovers she has
magick too, and soon chaos reins)
It was going pretty good. The chapters
weren't ending up as long as I thought they were going to be, and
I'll admit, I was a little worried about reaching the 80k I needed
this book to be, but the story itself was going exactly the way I had
planned. Maybe that's why it happened.
The first thing to go wrong was a
chapter being added. I'd realized that there was more that I hadn't
shown that could be important. First one chapter, then two and now
I'm sitting at eight chapters added.
The next thing was a character forced
herself in to the book. She started out as just a girl walking past
Phaedra making a comment. When she appeared in another scene and
named herself, though, I knew I was in trouble.
Once she was added, another character
showed up, this one much more unique and surprising.
The enemy of my character (not the
antagonist, they just didn't get along) turned out to be so much
nicer than I originally thought. I added too many layers and now
she's friends with Phaedra!
Two more subplots somehow wound
themselves in there around the two characters that showed up, both
subplots will be extending multiple books.
And, finally, there was a love interest
that I hadn't originally planned on. Between Phaedra and one of the
characters I had originally planned on. Which would have been fine,
except that I knew he was dying about half way through the book, and
every time they were cute it made me that much more sad when I had to
kill him.
Before you say it, I know, these
surprises are making the book better, but it's just so frustrating to
have to change the basic plot of my book that I worked so hard on to
accommodate everything. I'm finding myself constantly thinking of
new things that would be happening because of it, and my easy, no
hassle book is suddenly inserting itself in to my life.
I suppose I'll just have to go along
with it and hope that my other books don't do the same thing.
Hopefully I'll have a much better book in the end. Can't wait to see
how it turns out!
Do you ever find yourself with
surprises in your novel? Are you a planner, or a pantser?
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Daily Word Count: 11,079
Total Word Count: 66,092
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