Diving into the Manuscript

Should it surprise me when my character do things I don’t expect them to? No. DOES it still surprise me every time they do? Yes, yes it does.

Characters going rogue is a really intriguing occurrence in writing, especially because I am such a planner. I take the time to outline what the story is and how it has taken shape in my mind. I give myself time to meet the characters that have already introduced themselves into the world and explore what the relationships to each other are before beginning to write. Still, for every draft, something surprising happens between those characters. For MS:L, it is a relationship between two characters who I didn’t think had any interest in each other, and it announced itself early on in the story. The cool thing is that it gives more reason behind why one character does what they do and it binds two other characters who were already close even more so. One of these characters, my main character’s best friend, is one who I didn’t get to know very well before I started writing. I also suppose, I’m just realizing, that with how little this story was drafted before I began this round of writing, this is probably going to be a very common thing. I should also clarify that this is a really great thing to happen, which is why I’ve mentioned it so many times before. Anytime this happens, where characters go where I didn’t think they would, love someone who I didn’t see them interacting very much with before, or become something they didn’t begin as, means that the story is living its’ best life and I’m not interfering with its’ magic. It’s something I’m always grateful for. ⭐️

Last week I managed to complete the first seven chapters of the manuscript. Most of these chapters were already written, which meant most of the work was in very heavy revisions and few newly written words. That ends this week though. I have a few chapters scattered throughout the rest of the manuscript roughly sketched out, each sitting at about 500 words, and then the rest is all notes about what will happen within the scenes and chapters. I’d be lying if I said the amount of blank space standing between me and the 70,000 word draft I want to have at the end of March didn’t intimidate me. BUT, I’d also be lying if I said I was still sitting with the intimidation I felt going into writing this world about magic. It still does, though not near as much now that I’ve begun the process. Setting myself back into the world and having a friend remind me that I needed to set the rules of the world and stick with them helped ground me in the space. It helped ground me in the knowledge that this is a world I’m creating and I can and will use the resources available to me to set the ground rules for the world the way I want them to be.

I hope you know that you are more than enough and I hope you’re sharing the message where you can. It’s a truth I hope we can all own.

Happy Writing!