I find myself greatly amused at how the story is and is not progressing exactly the way I expected it to. The overall plot is sticking fairly closely to how I had it mapped out in the outline. Right before I started writing, I added a couple of plot points that I thought might be fun to play with. But now I’ve taken them back out again as obvious disruptions to the flow of the story. In retrospect I think I might have been fretting about padding the plot to make sure I hit the target word count, something I’m not as worried about at this point. Perhaps later I can go back and work them into a stand-alone short story.
On the other hand, some of the characters are taking on a life of their own. The Army’s interpreter was originally intended to be an abrasive, self-righteous fundamentalist, but that isn’t how he’s turning out at all. In the past I’ve thought other authors strange for talking about their characters as if they were real people with lives of their own. Now I can at least see where one might get that impression. It makes me a little sorry I removed one of the characters from the list right before I began work on this section. It was the right decision, because the cast was getting cluttered. And when I asked myself “why is he here?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Still, it would have been interesting to see how he developed. Again, maybe I’ll use him for something else in another story.
Today was a strong writing day, with a good writing session in the afternoon and another one after dinner. The daily total was 1893 words, bringing the “Mist” total to 5717 and the overall total to 32,700 even.
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