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lizvogel(Copied from comments elseweb, because I want to be able to find this should it happen again.)
I don't deliberately choose stories to stretch my writing ability; I just write what catches my interest. But sometimes, it seems, stretchy sneaks up on you.
The current WIP is definitely of the snuck-up-on-me kind of stretchy.
Some of it is simply that I'm having to be more analytical than is my wont. For example, I need a bigger cast for the ending to work, so I'm having to deliberately create characters, when normally they just wander into my head fully-formed. I'm trying to balance the demographics, because while I don't care, my MC would. And I'm measuring out their introductions so that I don't end up dumping a whole horde of people in at once Because The Plot Said So, which means I'm watching the pacing/structure a lot more carefully, when usually I'll just do things whenever it feels right.
There's also a lot more threads in play than I anticipated for something as surface-simple as "man survives Apocalypse". I wouldn't go so far as to call them all plot threads, but they're definitely concepts in play throughout the novel. So I have to keep the theology discussions balanced against the practical necessities, and time them so that the one supports or feeds off of the other. I introduced an additional outside threat that I planned to do more with, ended up dropping, and am going to have to weave back in PDQ before it becomes a broken promise to the reader. There's a character with a Secret, who spends the first two-thirds of the book saying things that everybody takes one way, but that the character and I know mean something else entirely. (That part's been fun; cue evil author cackle of glee.) I'm having to do more set-up than I'm used to for the ending, because none of the characters know what's coming so none of them are actively working toward it, but several of them are unknowingly doing things that will contribute to it. Having to hide the plot from all the characters is definitely a new thing for me.
Looking at it like this, none of these things are supremely stretchy for me (except maybe hiding the plot from the characters). But trying to do a whole bunch of moderately-stretchy things at the same time definitely adds up. And here I thought I just had a nice little trying-not-to-die-in-a-devastated-world story. (No, seriously, I thought this one was going to be relatively easy.)
It's definitely taking longer, too. Not so much in time (I'm always slow) but in word count. I'm at 80,000 words right now; my natural length is usually 80-90,000. This sucker's got at least 30K more words to go, maybe more, and I've been saying that for at least the past 10,000 words now. The more I work on it, the farther from the end I get. So the little voice in the back of my brain saying "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" is not helping.
And of course all this is coming to a head at about the two-thirds point, which is where I usually bog down on a novel anyway. I know what happens, I don't care any more, can rocks just fall and everybody dies? This has nothing to do with the quality of the story and everything to do with the writer, but it's hard enough to slog through even when the path forward is relatively, er, straightforward. When I have to keep jumping between multiple paths and keeping them all in sync and this is hard work, dammit, it's awfully easy to decide the yardwork is a higher priority.
I don't deliberately choose stories to stretch my writing ability; I just write what catches my interest. But sometimes, it seems, stretchy sneaks up on you.
The current WIP is definitely of the snuck-up-on-me kind of stretchy.
Some of it is simply that I'm having to be more analytical than is my wont. For example, I need a bigger cast for the ending to work, so I'm having to deliberately create characters, when normally they just wander into my head fully-formed. I'm trying to balance the demographics, because while I don't care, my MC would. And I'm measuring out their introductions so that I don't end up dumping a whole horde of people in at once Because The Plot Said So, which means I'm watching the pacing/structure a lot more carefully, when usually I'll just do things whenever it feels right.
There's also a lot more threads in play than I anticipated for something as surface-simple as "man survives Apocalypse". I wouldn't go so far as to call them all plot threads, but they're definitely concepts in play throughout the novel. So I have to keep the theology discussions balanced against the practical necessities, and time them so that the one supports or feeds off of the other. I introduced an additional outside threat that I planned to do more with, ended up dropping, and am going to have to weave back in PDQ before it becomes a broken promise to the reader. There's a character with a Secret, who spends the first two-thirds of the book saying things that everybody takes one way, but that the character and I know mean something else entirely. (That part's been fun; cue evil author cackle of glee.) I'm having to do more set-up than I'm used to for the ending, because none of the characters know what's coming so none of them are actively working toward it, but several of them are unknowingly doing things that will contribute to it. Having to hide the plot from all the characters is definitely a new thing for me.
Looking at it like this, none of these things are supremely stretchy for me (except maybe hiding the plot from the characters). But trying to do a whole bunch of moderately-stretchy things at the same time definitely adds up. And here I thought I just had a nice little trying-not-to-die-in-a-devastated-world story. (No, seriously, I thought this one was going to be relatively easy.)
It's definitely taking longer, too. Not so much in time (I'm always slow) but in word count. I'm at 80,000 words right now; my natural length is usually 80-90,000. This sucker's got at least 30K more words to go, maybe more, and I've been saying that for at least the past 10,000 words now. The more I work on it, the farther from the end I get. So the little voice in the back of my brain saying "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" is not helping.
And of course all this is coming to a head at about the two-thirds point, which is where I usually bog down on a novel anyway. I know what happens, I don't care any more, can rocks just fall and everybody dies? This has nothing to do with the quality of the story and everything to do with the writer, but it's hard enough to slog through even when the path forward is relatively, er, straightforward. When I have to keep jumping between multiple paths and keeping them all in sync and this is hard work, dammit, it's awfully easy to decide the yardwork is a higher priority.
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