Last week, in terms of planning for the upcoming Nanowrimo novel, was mostly an exercise in frustration. Imagine working on a jigsaw puzzle but being thwarted on putting any of the pieces together. That's how I felt. I had a bunch of interesting elements jotted down or in my head, but I had no idea how I was to put them together into a coherent narrative. And then, I decided to browse different types of laboratory glassware online.
Lab glassware?! you might be thinking. Isn't that the dorkiest thing someone can do, aside from reorganizing a stamp collection? Well, yeah, probably. But it did help connect something in my brain, because now instead of all these scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces, I now have islands of them connected--and possibly even the border all put together. Sure, there are still swaths of the picture still missing, but now I think I'm on the right track.
So what exactly is this idea? I'm going for late 18th century gothic fiction--if not the literary style, then at least the atmosphere. There's going to be fantasy and mystery elements. There might also be a bit of self-parodying, depending on my mood the particular day I'm writing a scene. And hey, since gothic fiction does contain supernatural elements, if I'm feeling a bit Lovecraftian, I even have the leeway to throw in an abominable monster or two. In brief: an apothecary's daughter, in serious debt after the death of her gambling-obsessed father, is coerced into working for an investigator with a sinister reputation. Their current investigations lead them to a ruined estate inhabited by a mad earl...
And, well, there will be all sorts of weird things happening once the main characters get to the estate. I think I'm going to have the plot begin with what looks like a rather straightforward murder and then trail off into something a lot more complex. What this complexity is, I don't know. But I do know I'll have to start cobbling together some sort of time line before I start writing.
