Mental Movies

I've realized that there's one good thing about all the activities I have scheduled in the next week: A lot of them involve meals, so between the pulled pork and the quasi-Indian curried chicken I made last night, I shouldn't have to cook for a week.

I discovered yesterday that while I had outlined the rest of the book I'm working on, I've changed a lot as I've been writing it, so it doesn't really all fit anymore. Even the soundtrack I made for the book no longer fits. I got a start yesterday on outlining and planning, but I think today is going to be a big brainstorming day -- put on some music, get out the blank paper and colored pens (maybe even crayons) and go to town. I need to see the movie of the story in my head before I can write it or else the scene will be lifeless. So I need to go to the mental movies today.

I do have a start on it. Once one good image comes up, it seems to breed more images and spin off more ideas. Just changing the location of a planned scene opened up some plot possibilities. Then plugging a plot hole I noticed spun things off in another direction that provides some opportunity for fun. One thing I'm really looking forward to is switching some characters around. I have two parallel plot lines going, with the characters split into two groups. Midway through, the groups meet, merge, then split again, but they split along different lines, and that creates some interactions I haven't really used much before. For instance, two of the main characters are sisters, and each is the lead of her own plot line, but they've seldom interacted because of that (I guess it's like Frozen in that respect, but I wrote the first book of this series long before that). In this book, they're going to end up working together, and that should be so much fun to write.

I ended up bowing out of all Saturday activities, so I'm looking forward to a retreat kind of day, with writing, reading and maybe some pampering and other relaxation stuff. Or, you know, playing on the Internet all day.