Thursday, April 19, 2012

Q is for Questions

As of right now, I have about 17,000 words and 82 pages towards my Script Frenzy, and I'm hoping to have about 70,000-100,000 words when I'm done, though it'll take longer than the rest of April to get that far.

This story's gone through a long painful process of writing and writing and writing. Each time I've attempted to write this story, it's changed in varying degrees. It originally started off as a single question:

  • Who killed Ennis and why?

Then I started adding characters and situations that changed the question into:

  • How did the death of Ennis and Caoi Gillespie cause the destruction of their hometown?

Now, about four months later, I'm in my... third or fourth "draft", though I haven't actually managed to finish the story like I wanted. I completely changed the story in some ways and kept it the same in others. I've expanded my original question into several questions:

  • What happened to Hayase Mawe?
  • Who killed Heind Navidson?
  • Why did Caoi and Ennis Gillespie disappear?
  • Who is the father of the Gillespie twins?
  • How are the above questions connected?
  • Who is Elia?


I think it's easier sometimes to work around building a story through these kinds of questions. I try to leave myself enough room to work more into a story, and asking myself these questions lets me focus on details as well as the big picture.

I'm starting to wrap up some of the questions, though I still need to put a few more details into them. The last question is more of a subplot that I'm hoping to connect into a larger collection of stories. I'll have to see how things work out with this thing first.

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