Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Sometimes you need to call in the dragons


Welcome all- today I’m doing my best to come up with a blog that actually makes sense. Ya see, NaNoWriMo has eaten my brain- very sad. It’s even sadder when I mention that I am behind on words, my week-ends are filling up faster than sales on Black Friday, and my characters have decided to go on strike. It doesn’t look good.

So when I was thinking about what I was going to do, I thought- how could I make things really messed up for me as the writer (yeah- I did- of course this will screw up my characters do- but in a different way).

I decided to add dragons. Now, even though I love dragons and they are in the title of my blog, I have yet to put them in any of my books. They are in my NEXT planned book (always have something waiting in the wings is my motto ;)), but not in any I’ve done so far.

So, the other day I added dragons. Now I’m not completely insane, while at first I thought about making them part of my world building from the beginning, I managed to talk myself out of that horrifying idea. The idea of diving back into the jumbled mess that is a NaNo dirty draft and throwing such a major element in just made me shake in fear.

So, they’ve now become part of the “big bad” issue. In fact, adding them actually gave me a bigger frame for my story and a few more layers of betrayal to deal with.

Now I wouldn’t recommend adding dragons (or blowing things up- I am fond of that technique as well) for everyone. But sometimes pulling in something completely from left field and forcing it into your story is just what the writing doctor ordered.

Shake things up and ya get a whole new yahtzee score ;).

6 comments:

  1. Great piece of advice! I've founds that adding an unexpected element (a character, a plot twist, almost anything) can get me out of being stuck. And I love that you added dragons! But it's too bad you can't count your blog posts in your Nano word count, isn't it? ;-) That would make life easier!

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  2. Great to hear you found a way to get over the bump. The dragon sounds interesting.

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  3. adding an unexpected element is always a good choice when the plot starts to suck. but i have to admit I have never even considered dragons. worth a thought or two.

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  4. Thanks for coming by Janet, Maggie, and Louise!
    LOL-I've thought about that Janet- my blogs this month should count dang it!

    I hope the dragons work...they're just causing mayhem right now :)

    Thanks for the comments!

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  5. Hee! Everytime my book feels like it's dragging my motto is "Time to raise the body count"... :)

    Nothing like a dead body to ratchet up the tension! LOL

    Good luck with the dragons Marie!!! You can do it...

    Lisa :)

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  6. Sometimes research helps jump start a stalled story for me. A little historical tidbit can really open up plot opportunities

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