In which I achieve an ending I'm happy with

I took my little toy to Borders and hung out in the cafe for a bit. And I am very happy with how I've worked out the ending for this story. I think it will work beautifully. Started to expand the scene planning, too. I think the step I still need to buckle down on is character work and more world building. I'm getting closer to figuring out the important bad guy, but for my own sake I need to understand the bad guy controlling the important bad guy, as it were. He's not so important to my story per se, but it will help me cement the ways in which the world our hero is adventuring in is different from our world, and why. I think this is important for *me* to know, even if the reader never finds out about it. And then I need to do is plot the story from the pov of each of the characters. I think this will be a neat step, and a lot of fun. I'm really focusing on three characters, but maybe I'll let the hero's parents grow up a bit as well in little entre act type scenes. That might be cool. It's always worried me that when kids disappear into alternate universes, their families never seem to care much...

I think I'll be ready for Nov this time!!

In which I confess to procrastination

Not surprsingly, I've been having trouble keeping up with this blog. My thoughts have been very much elsewhere. But November is fast approaching, so I need to get back into a daily habit of writing. I've been planning, but not really writing. Maybe I'll try writing at lunchtime for a bit if I can cut loose from my social circle then. (Habits die hard!)

I've made a lot of progress on my story since I last checked in. I mostly just need to work on some of the secondary characters, and how the final scenes should go. I've spent a little time world-building, and need to focus a bit more on that. The world I'm working on is close to our own, but is more (surprise surprise) repressive. I also need to fight the "it's been done before" syndrome. Still. I don't want my final confrontation to be like a bunch of others that it is starting to be like. At the same time, the final confrontation is constrained by the story I've set up. Ah well, if it feels derivative, maybe it will sell ;).

The bad guys definitely need developing. Too bad I can't just model them on the real life bad guys I'm spending most of my time thinking about. But they won't really do for this, though I think they have a lot to do with the world's background and how it got the way it ends up.

The snowflake thing works very well for me when I get around to actually doing it. I've got a pretty well-developed 2/3rds, and am hoping to pin down the more prominent parts of the last 1/3 this week....

Meanwhile, back to mindless procrastinating.