I'm sorry the posting was so short, this morning. It was all I had time for. I'm still averaging 3,000 words per day, and I'm going to try to post 6,000 for tomorrow.
The chapter this (Friday) morning is a hitchcock, named for Alfred Hitchcock, who perfected the technique. I learned about it from Holly Lisle.
In the hitchcock, suspense is built up, as something terrible is clearly about to happen. (I need to rework the chapter, to build it up more.) The reader is sure that something bad is coming. In a burst of relief that is often comic, the feared danger turns out to be something entirely harmless.
Just as we are relaxing in the euphoria of released tension, the real danger, which has been there all along, comes at us from an unexpected direction.
This is the first time I've written one, and I can see that I need to go back and build up the tension more.
I do intend to re-post this chapter tomorrow morning, more fleshed out. I'll put a note at the front of the next chapter, to alert readers to reread the previous chapter, if they didn't just read it.
If you are enjoying the chapters, please remember to vote and/or comment on them. This is a learning process for me, although I hope the journal helps it be a learning process for you, too. When you let me know what things do and don't work for you, it helps me to write better, which will hopefully make the reading more enjoyable, in a reader/writer symbiosis.
Brian Groover
Frederick, Maryland
Friday, 7 November 2014
YOU ARE READING
NaNoWriMo Journal
RandomThis is the journal of a walk through writing an entire novel in a month, as it happens. This includes thoughts, tools, struggles, and planning strategies. I wrote 78,000 words for the novel in the month of November, 2014, and this is the journey...
