I’ve got my characters split across two locations right now – technically three, but two of them are linked so that location B1 won’t come back into view until the characters presently at B2 have returned – and I find it’s a great help. Obviously having two storylines to write is a boost to the wordcount in any case, but having two to switch between means that when I get stuck in one, I can pick up events in the other for a while.
Of course that in itself wouldn’t make me any less stuck in the first. That would actually be bad because there’d be weeks of stuff in one story line and nothing in the other. But I find that if I do a chapter or two (or three) in a storyline, my mind usually works through the problems with the other in the background somehow. I’ve switched a couple of times already today, and it’s really helped me to keep my wordcount going.
That’s not to say the whole thing is totally without drawbacks. Having two stories happening at the same time, and switching between them, means you have to keep track of what’s happing on either end to be sure you’re more or less synchronised in time. Especially when your characters have comlinks to each other they can use occasionally. I think I’m pretty much on track there as well though, and that at least is one area where any little mistakes are pretty easy to sort out in the edit… I hope.
November 21st, 2008 at 22:21
Two story lines … pfff. No wonder you keep stacking up the words. I am still trying to find out how I can make my C-story (A and B are the main stories, the same thing more or less told from two different viewpoints) more prominent. It would give me more background to write against in the other stories and it would give me more words. Now, if this would just be easier…
November 22nd, 2008 at 00:21
Well story lines might not be the best way to put it, but there are a couple of different issues. And right now my two groups of characters (B1 and B2 have rejoined) each face their own challenges. Group A is trying to run down someone infiltrating and manipulating a space-station’s computers. While group B, which includes about 20 soldiers, is facing a few hundred hostile troops trying to board another space station.
There’s a lot of diplomatic, and political stuff moving all of that of course. But that little sketch is the gist of it from the practical side. If anything I’m starting to worry that I’ve taken on a 200k+ epic by having so many elements. And my MC has taken to hinting that there’s another month or two they have to go through before everything is totally settled – and I’m pretty sure we’ve only covered three or four weeks at most so far.
November 22nd, 2008 at 00:29
Funny how they surprise you sometimes like that, the characters, isn’t it? My MMC just neatly closed a couple of lose ends. After I had written the paragraph I was looking at it astonished, marveling at the beauty of the solution. But both my characters want this to be over with, they are only wrapping things up now (they don’t know yet I have one more thing in store) and then that will be it.
November 22nd, 2008 at 00:47
I’m pretty sure I’ve given you a link to “Author versus Character” before. There are days where I feel that my characters are the ones telling a story, and I’m just the poor schmuck they’re slapping around to get it pumped into a wordprocessor. Mind you all the times they make me laugh are a pretty good compensation, but sometimes I’d like to think I could actually influence where the story I’m writing is headed…