The Fourth of July

It is officially the Fourth of July, but holidays won'tt stop me from writing. Yesterday went smoothly (for the most part) – I produced (or started to produce) a fresh outline of the project I mentioned yesterday to work with, trying to figure out where the story is headed. 

I’m kind of in two minds with how it should turn out right now – at the moment, its set in the countryside, in a quintessential American town, but I’m thinking that moving the events of the story to a bustling metropolis (at least, the first two acts) might work just as well.

My reasoning behind this is that it could provide a greater contrast, whenever our heroes are forced to flee, as the bad guy starts basically taking over. Then again, I could invert it: leave the first set in a small town and set the other part in a large city, where they flee to afterwards. I don’t know, right now I’m just going to get through the outline and we’ll see how that turns out. My major problem with this particular story is, as I mentioned was one of my fundamental struggles my writing – over-thinking. 

The plot wasn’t flowing right (although it seems to be going better in the outline I’m currently detailing), but maybe I can get it right this time around. Let it emerge naturally and I’ll get it done. The other project was also suffering for some issues and I’ve been thinking about that – not necessarily about the story itself, but why I was having problems with it and I concluded that my central problem here. 

I also had some trouble starting it up, trying to work on character pages, but that didn’t really go very well and I sat there for a while before I decided to tinker with an outline instead, which seems to have been what the story really needs. Just write out, let it flow and let’s see what comes of this. As far as writing goes, I don’t have much else to add, so I’ll finish off the session with a bit of story-writing. 

He stood alone, on an empty platform whenever a woman appeared to him out of the mist, wearing a dark blue uniform, her dark hair tucked away into a cap. She smiled at him.

“Ticket?” she asked.

“Uh, I don’t have one,” he said. “I don’t even know where I am.” 

“Oh…” she frowned. “Hmm. We get spontaneous arrivals sometimes. The ship will be here before too long and send you on your merry way.” 

“So, where is this place?” he followed her.

“The Crossroads of Worlds,” she said. “If you’re here, then you’re here for a reason. What’s your name? You should have a file.”

“Luke Taylor,” the man said, bemused. As they walked, he looked around, thoroughly impressed. Tall ceilings stretched as far as he could see, supported by Greek-style columns. Stone benches sat at intervals, and tall statues of people marched into the mist. Here and there, he could other things moving around in the mist – some sort of giant bat one moment, a walking tree another, a translucent pterodactyl whirled overhead.

“Here,” the woman said and stopped, before a door that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They entered together, into a crowded fairly ordinary office, with computer, telephone, desk and two chairs – one a comfortable office furniture, the other a straight-back wooden chair. He sat, she focused on her desk for a moment, and then a file appeared. 

She opened it.

“Where’d you get all this?” he asked, astounded. The first thing he saw was a picture – fairly recent, going by its appearance, his time, weight, height, current job, eye and hair color, current occupation, and on and on.

Okay, I think that’ll do for today – just a random snippet of something I threw together. I’m honestly not sure what it is to be honest, but it was fairly interesting to write. See you all tomorrow. Thanks for reading.