I am in a good mood today. In fact, I'm excited.

Why?

Because I'm finally making progress on my Wattys project.

Yep. As I'm writing this, I have basically finished the high-level outline of the story, from beginning to end. Yes, there are a few tweaks here and there but essentially, I have the beginning, I have the middle, I have the end. It should come as no surprise to my fellow writers out there that the story has taken on a different life than I imagined just a few months ago. At its core, the story remains the same. Some of the mechanics that drive the plot are different, however. In one sense, it makes me sad to see this change because my original idea was very much exploratory sci-fi. Leaving those concepts behind is hard but I'm excited because the story is so much better because of it. 

What can this teach us?

Don't force something into a story if it doesn't fit, regardless of how precious it is to you. 

In my case, it was a piece of technology that doesn't exist, although likely could. I was so enamored with this idea from the time I explored it during NaNoWriMo many years ago that I built the story around the technology instead of creating the technology to fit the story. Making that adjustment, letting the story play out, let me stumble upon the solution that will lead to what I think is a marvelous adventure. 

So, yes, I'm happy.

Now, let me take a little bit of a step back and explore how I achieved my high-level outline. You may recall that a few chapters (or days) ago, I mentioned that I was going back to the method I used to outline my story Intervention. What does that mean? Well, let me show you from the perspective of Scrivener, as that's the software I use to write.

When writing in Scrivener, you can see all chapters visually in what's called a corkboard view. See it as a bulletin board with a ton of post-it notes on it. On each note, the synopsis of the chapter or scene is written. I took this to a higher level where instead out outlining each scene, I used each note for a larger chunk of the story. I wrote enough about that part of the story for my pantser writing mind to be able to pick up and write. In a way, it's an outline but it's high level enough to not bother with details (except a few), which gives me the freedom to be creative and write without constraints when I actually begin writing.

When I wrote Intervention, this outline of sorts became the foundation for my whole NaNoWriMo writing. Of course, the story changed somewhat as I wrote and with Intervention, the ending was very different in the final story than it was in the outline, but it worked. It was enough of an outline while at the same time almost being a first draft of the main parts of the story. Having that outline right now, it gives me a sense of relief, the knowledge that if I wanted to, I could sit down and start writing tomorrow.

What's next then?

Well, since I literally just put down the last period on this outline of mine, my next step is to go back to the characters. They need to be defined a bit more, now that I know the adventure they're going to be taking and what role they all play. I'll be doing that throughout the next few days and into next week.

After that, I want to take another look at the outline. This story, like Intervention, has a protagonist POV and an antagonist POV that I'm considering switching back and forth between in the chapters. The outline so far contains primarily the protagonist POV. Fortunately, adding the opposing POV chapters tend to become a fairly easy process as I write but what I'm considering this time is actually adding those into the outline as well.

I'll need to work on locations and other aspects of the story as well but some of those things I like to just come up with as I write. We'll see what I end up doing this time. We'll see. I'm not committed to this at this point but it's something I'd like to explore. I like the chase from both perspectives. It's fun to write and depending on how it is written, it can also be quite a bit of fun to read.

As far as writing goes, my current goal is to get writing by April 20th at the earliest, May 1st at the latest. That still easily gives me the three months I think I'll need to write this story, plus almost two months to edit and tweak things.

I'm in good shape, in other words.

How are you doing with your project?