I’ve allowed the characters to drive the story in Episode 6 to some extent. It’s not really a bad thing because it means that I was in the zone and going with the flow while writing despite having an outline. The challenge I have now is that I have a budding romance I didn’t originally plan for on my hands.
This left me with deciding whether to allow it flow as is and potentially derail the outline, squish this plot bunny completely, or somehow figure out how to shape it into the main plot as a subplot. I put a ton of effort into this outline and I refuse to derail it. Let me just say the plot bunny won’t be squished. It keeps hoping back in. So now I’m left with shaping it into a subplot. Which is fine given how this is the “origin story” for Thomas and Rhae if we were to borrow a phrase from the comic book fans. In the short stories where they’re technically already established, they are a pair. In retrospect, I should have planned this in the outline. At least the characters haven’t forgotten who they are, so this is a good thing.
Needless to say Episode 7 is coming out slow. Day 8 only produced 800 that got rewritten many times during the day. I know I broke the rules. The inner critic was so loud that day, I almost didn’t write at all. Day 9 was better with 1508 words and far less revision – mostly just making stupid lines less stupid. Today is Day 10 and I hope to finish the episode but I can’t make any promises. I need to figure out how to resolve the awkwardness (or not, because these two just… ugh!) and then transition to the next episode.
Experiment #5 