20,000 words (and one Star Destroyer) under the belt.

20,000 words (and one Star Destroyer) under the belt.

Tonight I am finishing my ten straight days away from work.  It was a great vacation.  I didn’t go anywhere, there’s no where to go right now.  But I got up late every day, wrote and reached my goal of 20,000 words!  I’m at 41,917 words, to be exact.  This also puts me beyond the halfway point of the script that I’m novelizing.  I’m at page 81 of 143.

I’ve found that the hardest parts of novelizing  a screenplay are the fight scenes.   A scene in a script is an outline.  Character A hits character B in the barn, meanwhile, character C fights character D outside.  You can leave a lot of detail to the stunt coordinator.  But in a novel, you can add what the characters are thinking, what they see, what they smell.  You can go into a lot more detail in the scene, but you don’t want to add too much detail or it will slow the action down.  It’s a balancing act.

There’s also the question of Point-Of-View.  A script is written from the point of view from the camera, but a novel can be written in a variety of ways.  I write in the third person, but the point of view can change throughout the novel.  So, what do you do if you write from character A’s POV in the barn, break to character C’s POV outside, but then characters C and D stumble outside the barn?  Who’s POV do you continue to use?  I’ve had to resolve that problem a number of times in this novel.  Sometimes it requires moving certain bits of action and information around.

I also find myself editing my screenplay as I go along.  Seeing the story as a novel, I’m revisiting my scenes in a different light.  Sometimes I make corrections, sometimes I find that I left sometimes out, or sometimes I think of a better piece of dialogue.  So both my novel and my screenplay are works in progress.

As far as goals, I should be able to finish my novel before the end of the year as planned.  My new goal is to write 3,000 words a week.  That should finish the book by November, giving me enough time to edit before the end of the year.

As far as Lego, I was able to work on my hobby a bit.  I thought I’d start by dusting off my Star Destroyer.  I’ve had it for ten years.   But as I took the top panels off, I found that the frame had bent downward under its own weight.  You can see the bend in the frame in the top picture.  I also found that the panels weren’t just dusty, but grimy.  So I’m taking those apart and washing them.  It’s still a work in progress.

 

Dennis Amador Cherry

17th article completed.

First Steampunk novel:  41,917 words.

I know a boy who’s name is DAC,

He loves to build, he loves to stack.

Oh, yes, construction is his knack,

He’s DAC, the Lego maniac.

Another old commercial.

2 Comments on “20,000 words (and one Star Destroyer) under the belt.

Leave a Reply to Dennis Cherry Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.