Getting back on the horse…

Last night I sat down, moved the dozens of things I generally have on my plate aside, and started plotting out the story for my next adventure.

Since the 90’s I’ve used an app called “Dramatica Pro” to nail down the characters, premise, structure, and acts for my settings and writing. It’s a fantastic bit of kit for anyone who does world-building or writing; highly recommended.

Anyway, I hammered out the rough genera, theme, plot, and characters last night, and am at the ‘let it simmer’ stage where I give it a day before going back and looking it over critically. I’ll probably have most of the 20-ish pages of first draft done over the weekend, and will be in a position to put pen to paper some time next week.

I’m fairly certain this effort will take place in my Caerth setting as I’ve been vacationing there since the early 80’s and know most of the place intimately. This usually makes it easier to come up with shenanigans for the characters to contend with.

The goal this time is to put together an actual self-contained novel-length three-act story for publishing, being as self-publishing is actually a thing now.

A self-contained tale is a bit outside of my comfort zone as I tend to create settings for other players to do things with, so being both the “GM” and the “Player” for the entire process will be interesting.

As I mentioned back in April, I’m also kicking around the idea of writing in a friend of mine as a character. Which is fraught with peril… I’m not one for playing other people’s characters or putting words in their mouths so to speak, so the perpetual fret over if I’m being faithful to the character might overly complicate things.