Oi vey. It bears mentioning that the last big, honkin' chunk of fiction I wrote was the short story that I linked to in my October 18 post. That story was written in 2005, so as you might imagine, I'm a little rusty, and my muse sleeps later than I do.
That said, I started my writing around 17:30 today, shooting for my weekend quota of 2625 words. In that span I wanted to use no more than my first pair of plot points: a character introduction and the first part of a two-stage disaster. The end result was that getting those two plot points out of the way got me close to my quota, but not quite there. Today's total was 2,400 words, out of my intended 2,625.
While it has been an awfully long time, since I wrote a short story, I find myself putting a lot of effort into not using the pacing of a short story. Shorter works of fiction either allow or force the author to gleen over some of the details or do a bit of hand-waving in lieu of explanation to remain concise. When done properly, it gets across the detail that's absolutely necessary, without sending the word count spiralling out of control.
Detailed descriptions aren't necessarily something to be avoided, though. When there's no upper limit on the word count, you can take the opportunity to paint a complete picture. Thus, as I write Consent of the Governed, I'm already stopping myself from describing with one sentence what really deserves a paragraph or two. I can give the odd glimpse into characters lives and properly characterize them through actions, rather than expository summaries.
Of course, the final word count will reveal if I get better or worse at maintaining pacing appropriate for a novel, instead of a short story.
And now, without further adieu, because I'm such a nice guy, the sum total of Day One's effort. I figure that while I'm writing introductory bits, I'll post the whole of each day's work, so that when I provide only excerpts later, you won't find yourselves completely lost.
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