Camp NaNoWriMo Day 2: the bloodthirsty child

Day 2: letting the bloodthirsty child tell his own story.

I've been told off about my overthinking of the Planner vs Pantser thing enough that it's getting embarrassing. Being told to stop stressing by Stephen Blackmoore was almost as weird and alarming as the time I had a dream about Chuck Wendig giving me 25 reasons why everything I write is crap. Yes, my subconscious really did do that to me.


At this point a reminder to myself is necessary. There are two things I'm not going to do this month:

1. Descend into "Doom and Gloom" mode and plaster my depressed state all over the internet
2. Delve into insane levels of overthinking with the result that #1 would become inevitable.

With those two things in mind, I should talk about the actual story rather than how I'm writing it. I know one thing about Toby Moonstone, main character of Doom. Nothing is more important to Toby than his family. When everyone he could possibly call Family has been killed before the story reached 5,000 words, you can tell I've done something truly horrible to the poor kid. By ten years old, all he has left is his quest for vengeance. He's a determined kid, so I can't imagine it's going to be long before vengeance is his... and really, what happens then?

The gap between Toby as a little kid and Toby as an adult is vast. I still can't imagine what might be going to fill it to take him from a bloodthirsty little child to a cynical and depressed but strangely almost optimistic adult. Yes, it is possible to be cynical, depressed and optimistic at the same time. You have to be a bit crazy as well, but Toby definitely has that one covered.

So... I'm writing crap and I know it, but I'm keeping on going because I know the things I'll find out later will help me figure out how to fix what happens at the beginning. Even more importantly, these events are going to help me get to the point of knowing how Toby came out the way he did. I need to understand what happened in my character's past to help me understand his present and I need to understand his present because only by figuring him out and making the story right am I going to be able to arrive at the point where I can chase him out of my head and move onto other projects.

...and now because it's taken me a while to write this it's day 3 of Camp NaNoWriMo and I should go and write some more.