Something happened in the final two weeks before JulNoWriMo. The missing Bad Company plotlines that have evaded me for so long have finally started showing themselves to me. This is a very good sign. It can only mean one thing: I'm finally getting close to finishing a complete first draft!
All my previous BadCo drafts have been incomplete. It's not just that they have huge plot holes. Many entire plotlines and chapters are missing entirely. Some major characters don't even have character arcs yet. Such has been the difficulty I've had in writing it, to the point where I actually burned out twice (in August '08 and this last January).
Then, a few days ago, the character arc of one particular major character, an ambitious young reporter named Amanda, suddenly came to me during one of those half-sleep periods before I wake up during which I tend to get most of my best ideas. Her plotline in a nutshell: she begins as a celebrity gossip reporter on a tabloid TV show, sent by her boss to dig up the dirt on the main characters, sisters Charlie and Desiree, so that their mother, right-wing New Age cult guru Drusilla, can ruin them. She pursues the case only to end up taking the place of investigative reporter Bob, Charlie's fiancé, when she finds out exactly why Dictel Corporation had him murdered. And just in time for Dictel to invade America after the Republican defeat in the 2008 election. Her reporting helps defeat the corporate coup attempt.
I'm writing down these plotlines now, each in a separate Microsoft Word file. I'll do the same with the plotlines I've already written in the story itself as well. My goal is to have them all written and printed by July 1.
This is definitely good news. What's more, I may be able to post chapters before JulNo ends...
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