So far all I’ve managed to accomplish is gathering the whole story into one document (3,234 words) and opening Q10 to stare morosely at the screen.

Not quite the 750 words a day mini-NaNo I was hoping for.

With no change in wordcount, it hasn’t been that good of a week. I’d blame the fact that I’ve spent a good amount of time playing World of Treadcraft, but a couple hours a night hardly eats up all of my free time. (Being caught up on Hulu is a testament to that fact.)

So enough stalling… time to find out why the story is broken. *rolls up sleeves*

Tending Plotholes

Normally when a story grinds to a halt it’s because my subconscious is trying to tell me something is broken.

Thanks to a brief discussion with Christopher, I managed to work out a few of the kinks in the storyline, but I’m still a bit mired. I’m not sure if this is a plotting issue or a characterization issue– and I’m not sure how to suss out the difference. *pokes story*

In grand Colored Markers Fix Everything tradition, I wrote all the scenes down on index cards and laid them out on the table. It seemed to flow well, which means the overly chatty nature of my fictives may simply be inherent snarkiness and not necessarily plot avoidance.

Which leads me to…

Who Are These People Again?

Even after three thousand words, I’m not sure I know any of these fictives very well.

Normally I have a pretty good grasp on the fictives I’m working with, either because they are loosely based on a fandom character (Kat from When Good is Dumb) or because they showed up as out of whole cloth without any prompting (Zee from Silverwitch).

This time around I have a lot of vague shadows that need to look more like people.

Which means it’s time for a short detour, in which I do some casting calls and MuseFic. I need to have these guys ‘alive’ enough in my head that I stop forgetting what color their hair is or how they’d react to a given situation.

This story really is more character-driven than plot-driven, for all the murder and attempted murder that’s scattered about. It’s about accepting what life throws at you, even if it wasn’t what you wanted, and moving on.

So time to start finding the people these shadows belong to! … No, not you Peter Pan, that’s a different story. *shoos In Dreams of Trees fictive back to his own story*