WiP Wednesdays 8/25

Wow, what a week.

First, who switched my muse with that of a YA writer's?  Seriously.  The adventure novel I'm world-building on is pestering me to become YA.  It wouldn't take a ton of work because the MC is already 18.  I could probably make him younger with little effort.  And the short story that I wrote, well  I think the MC is around 16/17.  I never really thought about it.

Second, I've been really scooting along on my Lodestar outline.  It's going so much faster and so much smoother than my last outline.

There are lots of places I can see to cut.  And that leaves me lots of wiggle room to incorporate the feedback I've been getting.  (And that I'm still waiting for from my brother.  This beta process is agonizingly slow.)

There are places where I might need to consider a serious plot restructure.  But I'll leave that until after all the feedback is in.

Next up is my adventure novel.  Which I'm considering looking at ways to make it be YA.  I've been doing a lot of world-building work on it.  It's set partly at a university.  In order to get the exact details I needed, I had to go ahead and create my own fictional one.  Which was a fun challenge in and of itself.

I even got to draw the map of campus.  That was interesting.  I do so much better drawing when I can do straight lines and sharp angles.  Give me anything else (like a circle) and I fail with great finesse.

There's a certain building on campus that is central to the mythology and plot of all three books in the series.  I drew its front elevation.  (Not as bad a failure as I thought it would turn out.)  Then I mapped all its various levels.

I still have to write out the history that I need for this novel.  Then it's on to character bios.

After that, massive amounts of research.  Mostly Bible research.  But lots of it.

And some research into Norse mythology, Japanese mythology, and their respective cultures so that I can outline/plot books 2 and 3.  I definitely see a trilogy, but only in the sense that they're all connected by having the same MC.  There would be an overall character arc, but each book would be self-contained with its own plot and mini-arc.

Lastly is the short story that I wrote a while ago.  Clockworks and Cogs, as it's loosely titled, is still pestering me to be turned into a novel.  I've partly indulged the story by giving it its own project binder.  (I'll blog about project binders tomorrow.)

I enjoy the story thoroughly.  The MC has to make a very serious choice at the end and I think that a novel would be a great place to explore what leads to that choice.  And I think my characters deserve more than 30 pages to have their story told in its best capacity.

How are your WiPs going?