Chapter 5 of my story

I am currently working on Chapter 5 of my story. I have been pretty busy the last couple of days so I have not had a lot of time to work on it. I really enjoy writing though and the words are coming fast and furious and I like what I have so far on Chapter 5. Like I said earlier, the first four chapters would be like the beginning of the movie before the credits begin. From here the story really branches out.

There is so many places they have yet to visit. So many characters, even main ones, they have yet to meet. Dynamics of the story change things dramatically. Mysteries deepen while new ones develop. Things have been quite action oriented, although a lot of character development has also happened in a short span. That is the way life goes though.

I have said multiple times that I have already fleshed the entire story out in my head, almost like it plays out in my head like a movie. This is true, but that is not to say that what is in my head is going to be the final product. Sure it will be the same basic story, but once you start writing things down you see things that might work that you didn't see before. You also see things that look great in your head but you can scarcely describe them in print without bogging the story down.

Here is a good example. In the second chapter the characters have an encounter with an old hermit. The thing is that he was never in my original story I had planned in my head. As I was typing the story I started describing people around the characters. There was an ex soldier, a deserter, for instance. I debated taking that aspect some where but simply left him as a background character. Since then I have fully fleshed out a back ground to that character. He will most likely play no further part in the story but I have an idea of where he has been and where he is going.

The old hermit began simply as a description of an old man walking towards the characters wearing dusty old rags for clothes. As I typed out his description in the story, I had no idea just why the hell he was approaching the characters. For a few minutes I debated on what his intentions were before I decided to take him in a direction that would have implications for the rest of the story. His character does not survive, but it added an entirely new dynamic to the story. Now there is an entire group of assassins running around, maybe. Or maybe it is some religious cult. Maybe one of the main characters is on the run from said cult. Maybe it is none of those things (Most likely but you'll have to read the story when it is finished to know for sure- and by that point I will have probably changed my mind anyways). I have a good idea but that is all, an idea that I know will go some where.

Will it affect the outcome of the story? Absolutely not. It is simply a nice little subplot. And the old hermit was not the only addition to the story. Just in the last chapter I used a real life injury of someone I know to afflict a character. In the story it is a minor foot note but it does play a critical role in showing character development, as the character makes a bold choice to help her companion rather than herself. To that point she had been antagonistic to the other character.

I knew at some point I had to switch from an antagonistic relationship to one of working closely together but I had no idea how I was going to do it. This was just an example of how I used something in the real world to push the story along in a minor way.

That is one thing I love about writing. I surprise myself. In the first 4 chapters there are at least two major encounters that were not in the original story. I find it helps to keep a story exciting, especially early on. That is why I write in blocks of 6-8 pages at a time. Keeps a quick pace to the story. While I love stories like Lord of the Rings I do not want to tie down endless pages upon pages of the characters walking around smoking pipes and eating cakes.

Also since I based one character largely on the traits of a real life person I know, I had to alter some of the other characters in minor ways. It fits better with the real life person and hence makes writing it that much easier. Now a major character, who simply served as an almost third dynamic to the main two characters relationship with one another, has changed dramatically to be a thorn in their sides. Well thorn might be a harsh word but rather his character was altered enough that he serves as more than a mere distraction to them. To fit in with this change I had to alter where the character came from in the setting.

Now he does not change though other than that. Still the same character with the same traits. Just changed his relationship to another one of the characters (where as before he had none) and where he was from. To accommodate this, I had to change where the characters meet him. In doing this I had to find another character to take his place where the characters were originally going to meet him. Again just a minor shuffle and no major impact on the story.

That is how things like this develop.