Day 24 of writing my novel in public

I’ve started something scary here on Medium. It’s something I’ve done before, but never in public. I have a process that I’m going to follow, and I’d like to share it with you.

If you want to follow the journey from the start, go here.

If you missed yesterday’s, you can find it here.

Day 24 — Act 3 Thread Weaving

This part of the writing process is so exciting. The story threads I created for characters, settings, relationships, symbols and phrases come together as I weave them into scenes. As I do so, more ideas come to me. The threads become richer, more dynamic and their interactions surprise me.

I am now up to the third quarter of the novel, what I’m calling Act 3. Yesterday I reached the midpoint of the story where Charlie discovered that the dead body he thought he was tracking down was actually a stinking corpse lily. He was wrong about the body, but right that Miasmus is behind the thefts of stinky things that have been happening.

In this part of the book, Charlie will investigate exactly what Miasmus is up to.

I also had some ideas about my characters and the development of some threads overnight. I heard a conversation between Miasmus and Charlie where he tells Charlie that he should let people think that there is a secret ingredient to his cupcakes; it is what people want to hear. I’m not sure exactly how this fits in, but it will come to me.

The other idea surrounds Charlie’s dad. He has been ignoring the evidence that Charlie’s mum is not coming home until he receives a postcard from her, confirming the fact. How could his story thread end? I have an antagonistic relationship between him and the security guard. What if they end up going on a date?

So with all this in mind, I’m working on weaving together the story threads for the third quarter of my book.

Reflections

The story threads are really coming together now. I have isolated Charlie from Sandy and Woofy, so that he has to face the challenge alone in this section of discovering Miamus’ plan. He tries to bring the security guard and his dad on board, but struggles. His relationship with his sister Sandy improves, and so they can work together in the ultimate act to foil Miasmus.

Tomorrow I will look at weaving together the story threads for the last quarter, Act 4, into my scene grid.

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If you want to try the process with me and write your own novel, I’d love to have you join me on this journey. Put in the comments on how you went with this step.