Breakout

So have I officially pimped the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook yet? It's pretty amazing. Maass writes in the introduction that the exercises are intended to be applied to an existing draft, but some of them really seem like good ones to do before you start writing. I plan to do about 15 of them before moving onto the next stage of NP. But this is a good one for Pantsers, too-- it can help you to figure out what the heck to do with the stuff you pantsed. I recommend skipping the original book and just getting the workbook; there are plenty of examples in each chapter to get the feel of what he's talking about. And while some of the exercises will make you want to punch the wall, if you're honest with yourself you'll admit it's because he's right and that element of your novel does need some major work.

(Warning: this book is not fucking around. It assumes you want to write the best novel ever and that you are willing to complete 32 chapters worth of exercises and make literally hundreds of revisions to your novel.)

On Thursday The Son had his day with nana, while I indulged in an orgy of productivity, whipping through six "deepening your protagonist" exercises from WtBN and making notes on my little 3x5 monuments to OCD index cards. I was soaring by the end of the day, so high on accomplishment, so in love with my heroine Irsa, so filled with awesome writing power, I felt like I could probably grind out the book in a week or two if I had to.

The last two days have been significantly more subdued. I've discovered that I don't know any of the other characters as well as I do Irsa. The next WtBN exercises focus on deepening secondary and antagonist characters, and I'm drawing more blanks about their wants and needs, their goals and inner conflicts. I see now that the still-shadowy areas of the plot are a direct result of shadowy antagonists, and am hoping that the next week's work will shine some light into those shadows.