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One of the benefits of blogging a WIP is that, from time to time when thought processes don’t allow you to provide daily clarity of the process, you can at least turn to the project you are working on and provide a quick snippet. Here then, as I continue to work feverishly away at ‘Tec for NaNoWriMo is a trippy extract from Monday’s writing:

 

 

Mark ran through the field of long grass towards the figure in the distance. His arms were wide open, ready to embrace Alice but as he progressed, he realised that the grass was getting much higher and it was taking him a lot longer than he expected to get there. He looked down and found that he couldn’t see his feet any more and in fact with each step he didn’t feel as though he was actually moving; there was no feeling of anything under his feet. He looked up and saw Alice walking backwards in the distance.

 

“Where are you going?” he shouted. “Alice? Alice?”

 

Alice seemed to be speaking but he couldn’t hear anything. The wind had risen and was blowing the field of long grass back and forth and as he watched it seemed as though the grass was actually the sea, albeit green. A moment later and he saw Alice turn, and dive headfirst into the grass like a dolphin leaping through a hoop and into a pool.
“What’s going on?” he begun, but before he could get an answer something had grabbed his ankle and was pulling him under.

 

Mark tried to scream out, but when he opened his mouth it was filled with what seemed to be grass seed. He tried to spit it out, but it stuck to his cheeks and started to cover the back of his throat. His arms flailed around above him as he tried to claw for something to grab onto to keep him afloat but found there was nothing. Instead the tall grass, now well above his head, was beating against his face and head, swotting him down and further away from the dwindling light at the surface. As this progressed, he heard a rhythmic thumping at the back of his head and realised that this was no doubt the sound of his heart pumping and gasping for life.
As his vision began to darken, and he slipped into unconsciousness, he heard the build up of music which started slowly and rose in both sound and pace. He suddenly felt it was odd that as he was drowning in a sea of grass, the last sound he would hear would be “Ecstacy of Gold” by Ennio Morricone.

Mark, Alice and Danny are about to embark on their journey as detectives, but what does that mean and how can they be? Surely there need to be licenses given, and potentially exams passed or am I being naive and instead its an exchange of cash for a bit of paper to put in a picture frame and hang in their makeshift office?

If I want to make ‘Tec as real as possible (admittedly, it is fiction) answering questions such as those are really important. Therefore, I’m taking some time to do some research and find out the art of the possible which will then allow me to create the chapter which brigdes the “Lets be detectives” to “And here’s my card”.

Internet Search Engines here I come.

By end of Saturday I reached over 17k words, which is just over 1/3 through. I’m really happy with this, not only because I’m so far advanced against plan, but because I can see the end for this project that I’ve been wanting to write for so many years. As long as nothing unexpected jumps out and hits me, I should get the bulk of a first draft of ‘Tec completed by the end of November and I can finally put that project to bed.

That is, until I pull it out and give it a dusting down, ready for editing.

So for Sunday, I’m taking some time off from progress to spend some time with the family.

As ‘Tec has been something I’ve had plotted and in various stages of creation for several years, I know pretty much how the story pans out. However, when I decided to ditch the prologue a while back I had to rework the plot to accommodate another Chapter One.

With my NaNo attempt this year, I have turned the scratchings of notes for that  into an almost complete Chapter which pretty much sticks to my thoughts but adds some familial interaction and, as with NaNo, fleshes things out on the hoof.

Now, without giving too much away of the plot, there was an aspect of that first chapter that I had originally plotted as being left hanging. It was a moment that was throw away really, and all it was to show was that the main character Mark, had always wanted to be a detective.

However, when I was writing it yesterday and had a subsequent think while taking a break for a walk, I thought that if I took it a little further and add one extra element I could have a running theme and add some emotion and perhaps even some extra motivation for Mark through the book. That thought expanded and before long I had scribbled some notes of scenes to use throughout and up to an extra, pivotal chapter.

Writing last night, that chapter was fleshed out and we now have a dinner between Mark and Alice where Mark reveals what happened after the end of that first chapter and the repercussions for him, his friends and his ambitions. I think that the chapter adds a lot to the book and shows Mark in a slightly different light. It also helps to make Alice take a positive step which was going to happen anyway, but later on in the book.

It wasn’t an  easy chapter to write though, and I hope I managed to convey the emotions that first Mark, and then both he and Alice were feeling as the truth about a past incident and its consequences emerged.