Once again, I spent much of this morning thinking about the high-level plot of this latest story. It’s coming together, and I like it quite a bit. I admit I’m a bit worried about length, though. It looks to me like a 30-40,000 word piece, which is not particularly marketable. And the fundamental idea strikes the SFnal part of my brain only a glancing blow.
I live such a tough life.
When I say I’m “thinking” about the plot, I don’t mean I’m sitting down in my basement twirling around in my swivel chair and staring at the ceiling. That would just leave me dizzy. When I say I’m thinking about the plot I mean I’m fleshing out much of it in little pieces of pseudo-code as I go. I’ve got snippets of character dialog plastered in among journalistic and narrative bits. In a sense, I’m using a free-form version of the snowflake method of plotting.
So, anyway. I’m still not sure what the future holds for this piece, but I’ve vowed to keep thinking about it.