Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Sunday Night School – Day Two

Today went well, but not as good as yesterday. In general that's no big deal. Some days are better than others.

My particular concern at the end of the writing day today is that I'm a little stuck. I started at what seemed like a logical starting point: the first story in the collection. However, this particular piece is giving me a couple of different kinds of trouble.

First, the plot hinges on some technical details about DNA. At the outset of the writing process I admitted to myself that I didn't have the level of technical knowledge required to make this as realistic as possible. As long as the science fiction elements don't get too implausible, I'm prepared to forgive myself (and hope my eventual readers can do the same) if I make mistakes or suggest complete impossibilities.

However, even an over-simplified version of science and technology still involves a lot of science and technology. What I'm finding at this point in the story is that I'm having trouble striking a balance between details that are actually interesting and details that I'm merely trying to straighten out in my mind. And I'm concerned that details in the latter camp are bogging down the storytelling.

And second, I'm worried about story length. Figuring that I would write five stories and that I would need to hit 50,000 words before the end of the month was math so simple even I could do it in my head. But the end of the writing session today found me at the end of the first act of this story and at around 3700 words. Trouble is, act one is by far the longest of the three. If nothing else, it does all the set up. Thus I'm concerned that there isn't enough to this tale to get it to pull 10k worth of weight.

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