Last week I was plotting with younger son. Yes, Cat Valor. Bear with me. Yes, I do need to send him the completed outline before Saturday.
Anyway, we have a quarter of a novel, and had a tentative outline, but we didn’t know where the series was going.
So we sat down with younger DIL taking notes.
…. and synergy happened. A few things changed, like his age, and such things. And also, intrinsically who he is, which works better with the ending we’d planned.
Thing is, after we made a couple of changes, we started seeing ahead. And then, it was like … like it was a predetermined puzzle and we were just finding the right piece to fit in the right place.
I have had this happen before, and I can’t explain it, but it’s like light and sound and beautiful singing.
I don’t know how to explain it. I can try, but it’s not going to work because honestly it’s not rational.
However, once it hits right, everything else falls in place.
I have heard that it’s the same for other arts and even crafts. I don’t know how many, or how many writers have the same thing.
My quick and easy explanation is that your subconscious has already done the work, and it’s beautiful when you figure it out. However, this explanation would require me to share a subconscious with younger son, which is a bit much. However, who knows? He is after all my male clone.
The funny thing is in this revision of No Man’s land, I’m finding so many little things that have mini ones of this reaction. Things I didn’t explain or touch on, and when I do it unlocks entire subplots that didn’t seem to make sense before…
This, guys, is our reward for all the slogging and skull sweat.
Getting it right, and getting the trumpets and the full light beacon.
Okay, the cash after is nice too, but–
Trumpets. Choir of probably not angels. Light and sound, and knowing you’re getting it right.
It’s pretty nice.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “When the Light Goes on”
Lovely. My alpha reader had me add a new scene to help wrap up the ending a bit better. I was a little nervous because I didn’t have it worked out, but started writing, unsure of how it was going to go. It turned out everything had been set up for a certain thing through the course of the story. And it worked!
Hallelujah chorus, indeed. And many thanks to the back brain.
*nods* not as experienced as you but have seen more than a few writing projects come together like that.
Great!
There will be cash. Possibly after book 3 or 4 are on the market, but once readers find this world, they’re going to love it.
Pretty nice? Major understatement there. It’s like Christmas and you got the one thing you really wished for and never thought you’d get!
I’m currently grumpy, because I know I went the wrong direction, and now I have to ditch all the nice stuff and go kill all those people.
Even painting and I don’t paint that well. Or when I play my flute a bit better than usual. Or that time we did “All Good Gifts” so well at church. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC
In Even After, I was coming to the end of the outline, and realized where a certain character, known to be missing, would be found,
And then I was writing the first draft, and a character who had been little more than wallpaper in the outline makes a rash promise, early in the story. I put her subplot, and then realized why another character had done something just then, late in the story.
I ruminate on my plots at night in bed, and take bedside notes with me to my desk in the morning, where they accumulate, one pile per series entry, waiting to be applied.