Mike King

writing update

May 6, 2004 on 7:10 pm | In Life in General | Comments Off

I didn’t stick exactly to my schedule. But I did manage to get a couple of hours of writing done today. A lot of it was actually spent trying not to fall asleep! I’m pretty worn out — I think allergies are preventing me from sleeping very well lately.

Anyway, I worked out the general tone I wanted for the first chapter of the book for my daughter. She’s only three, so the story isn’t going to be very heavy on plot yet. Judging from the books she likes, that seems to be the way to go. So for now I’m just going to introduce the characters and see how she responds to the general setup.

I think I figured out a subject for my book. Actually, I think I’m going to start on two books. One is a YA novel that I’ve got a bunch of notes for already. The other is a kind of near-future action story. Very different subjects. I thought about dedicating time to only one. But I think I’m going to fiddle with both of them and bounce between them until one ends up taking over my brain.

Both could be screenplays, and maybe I’ll adapt them when I’m done; since I do believe that these two stories would make some darn good movies too. But for now I’m much more interested into getting into the characters’ thoughts and feelings in a way that can’t happen very easily in a screenplay.

Most of today was figuring out what sort of action story I was going to tackle. I still haven’t come up with the main problem or mission yet. But I have come up with a premise for the characters that I really like. The premise is what took most of today. Some of it was inspired by the thinking I’d been doing with my brother’s feature. The core idea for the heroine in my action novel is going to be about second chances and exploring how difficult it is to really change anything about yourself. Right now it’s a patchwork of clichés and borrowed ideas. But that’s how another one of my projects started before it became more original. I had to work through a lot of the first thoughts to find my own ideas lurking deep below.