After a few delays - such as having surgery to remove my gallbladder - I've finally been getting underway with "Celebrityville". First of all I got cracking with the short story ("The Great and The Good") that will tie-in to the main narrative (and accompany it in the book), but now I'm well underway with the primary text...
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As is always the case, it takes a little bit of getting into the groove, but - even with the festive season's lures pulling at my fondness for procrastination - I'm a few chapters deep. Including the short story I've thus far got 12,040 words on the page. I have a target word count in mind, although it's a little early to tell how accurate that'll be, but "Celebrityville" will be a novella.
Being that it takes place before the events of "Sleb", it's partly an introduction to this world I've gradually been discovering and expanding on paper, but it's also a stand alone story. There are references made to characters who appear in "Sleb", with one or two turning up in roles in this story, and likewise in "The Great and The Good". On one hand it's a more contained story, but on the other it's still fairly expansive in certain regards with a handful of major 'set pieces' along the way. I want it to have a quickfire feel, but I don't want to lose the detail that I enjoy lacing throughout each chapter ... so it's quite the balancing act.
You can plan extensively, but ultimately you've got to write thousands upon thousands of words to flesh it out and make a bunch of notes become a complete story. It's at this point that it can be challenging to bash all of those ideas - as defined as they may be - into shape and line them all up. You want to keep the pace swift, but you need to let the characters breathe, for the scenarios you're setting up to have enough time to play out.
Like I said - I'm getting into the groove - and although the next couple of weeks will be mostly about festive goings on, "Celebrityville" has begun!
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