I have been hard at work on my second novel since last December, which I'm now titling Ness Swan. It's a science-fiction adventure, and the idea was to make it like Firefly, but with the antagonists being the mob and no horses whatsoever. It evolved beyond that synopsis but that was the seed.
I got 185 pages into it, though, and yesterday I realized that Act 2 was getting out of control. This has always been my issue in writing: Act 1 is fine and Act 3 is well-mapped in my head, but bridging those two together is a royal pain in the rear.
Most of my issues stem in that I keep acting like a discovery writer when I should be an outliner. For those who don't know the difference, a discovery writer is Stephen King, who sits down on the computer and starts typing away. He has no idea how the story will turn out when he begins, he simply trusts that the story will appear as he writers. He discovers his story as he goes.
I don't have that gift. I wish I did, but when I try to just pluck away, I can and have written dozens of pages of story, but the middle will end up being a huge mess.
Today, since I have the day off, I'll be going to the library with a notebook and pencil and plot out everything that needs to happen in Act 2. I expect to have to do a fair amount of rewrite in the middle of my manuscript, but I don't anticipate needing to do a major overhaul.
Despite that, I plan to write out five pages of manuscript today and ten pages daily till the end of the week. By my Friday post, I plan to have twenty-five pages completed (I'll check my blog before I get to my manuscript.)
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