As some of you are probably aware, I’ve decided to be a participant in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) event this year. Things have been going smoothly since I began on the first, unfortunately, I’ve run headlong into a brick wall that I’m very familiar with.
For those of you not entirely familiar with me, the DM mentioned in the title of this little bit does not, in fact, stand for my name, but the abbreviation for Dungeon Master. Don’t know what a Dungeon Master is? It’s the person that makes up and runs the game of Dungeons and Dragons that your parents told you to stay away from when you were a kid.
I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons since I was about ten years old. The majority of my time with D&D, I ran the show. I was the Dungeon Master, the fact that the guy making up the stories bore the same initials as I, was not lost on me. In fact, I met some great friends, and enjoyed many wonderful times due to my initials being, jokingly, mistaken for the DM of D&D.
As the DM, I would make up stories and adventures for my friends to play through. Over the years, I began to create my own little world where these stories would take place. Sure I ran games that took place in the commercially produced game worlds, The Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Krynn, and even Athas. However, for me, the most exciting part of being a DM was the fact that I was God. At least of my creation.
In a fantasy creation, it’s very easy to wing things as you go along. To the north are the highest mountains in the world. To the south is a tree as big as the state of Texas. The further east you go, the colder it gets. There’s a desert to the west that has pink sand. Broad general statements that I could go into detail on as needed.
This detail was normally added by the actions, thoughts, or ideas of the others playing the game.
“You’re in a swamp, sludging through a particularly tree-y area when you hear a strange howl coming from a distance off to the right.”
“Crap! Did you guys hear that? Sounded like a graythim to me.”
:thinks: A what? What the heck is a graythim? How does he know about them?
“Ahem. Um… Actually, Robert, that’s exactly what it sounds like.”
“Okay, guys, we need to get to dryer ground and fast! These things may not be able to hear, but they’ve can feel us moving in the water.”
And so the graythim was born. I had no idea what it was until it was needed, and then it was there. It may not have been fully realized at first, but the seed had been given to me by someone else.
So, in the time between our gaming sessions, I would try to flesh out the area of the world that they were in. I’ve spent many hours creating calendars laying out nothing but weather patterns, and actual weather events for every day, for where they were. I knew how much snow would fall between noon and nightfall. How cold it would be for the person taking second watch.
In a fantasy game, it’s easy to paint things in very large strokes and fill in the details as you go on. The players don’t know what’s there. They may have a general idea, but I was the one that knew, for the most part, what’s was going on.
So how does this relate to NaNoWriMo? Well, the story I’m writing is fiction (possibly dark fantasy, or dark fiction, I really don’t know the proper genre name). However, even though it’s fiction, it takes place in some very real locations. Locations that while I may not personally know, I need to have an idea of what they are, how they look, who’s there, and what do they know. Even if I have two cops busting into an apartment, I need to know where that apartment is.
If I had a policeman radio Dispatch to send a bus to 124 Bloomingdale Pike, apartment 4, I need to know what those apartments look like. I need to know that they are the Country Gardens apartments, and not the Twin City View apartments. I need to know that they are split-level apartments, with a brick exterior for the first level and a white exterior for the second, and a green awning out front of the breezeway. (And if you’re curious… have a look.)
I really need to know if cops in this area even refer to ambulances as ‘buses’, or if I’ve been watching too much television. Who’s got the seniority, a Lieutenant or a Detective? Would they even be called out to the same location as a team?
These things are my bane. Especially considering the novel I’m working on now. One of the primary directives in writing is
“Write what you know.”
It carries just as much weight in writing as
“Draw what you see.”
does in art, or
“Black blacks and white whites!”
in photography (thank you, Mr. Howell.)
But it’s just a work of fiction, I can hear you say. Just make it up like you do the other stuff. Well, that may be true, and that’s more than likely how I should do things, but since the devil’s in the details, I feel that I need to know my details. I need to know everything about which I write. Okay, maybe not everything, but quite a bit. The more truth surrounding a lie (a fiction in this case), the easier it is to believe.
So why is this a problem? Just drive around a bit. Go to the areas that you’re writing about and take a look see. Is that so hard? In a word, ‘yes’.
The novel appears to be covering an span of at the very least over 200 years. In reality, it’s a far more daunting figure than that. I really should know the basics of what has happened in a hundred mile radius of where I sit over the past billion years. Yes, billion with a ‘B’. The Appalachian Mountains are the oldest mountains in the world. It may not matter to you to know that at one point, just a little past Boone, North Carolina there was a beach (and yes, I’m generalizing here) that lead to an ocean. It may not matter to you that probably about just before the Cumberland Plateau now stand was an inland sea.
It matters to me. I have characters that would know this information. It would be one thing if it were just a bunch of paleogeologists discussing these things in the present day. However, I’ve got critters in my book that have personal memories of these days. They know what the Appalachians looked like when they were first formed. If I’m writing a scene where a character is recalling some distant event, I want it to ring true enough that it feels real. I want it to ring true enough that if someone who studies such things wouldn’t laugh outright at my description of such things.
So, here I am, the second day dealing with my old foe, the Details. I find myself reading up on the paleogeological history of this area. Looking to see exactly where the confluence of Roan Creek and Elk River is. Trying to figure out what life was like in this area around 1820.
Normally, I would be fine with this. A couple days of doing hard research normally sparks something back up in me that allows me to let go the reigns a little and get back to what I really should be doing; writing.
If I’m not careful, the average of 1,336 words a day that I need to write will fall by the wayside, and I’ll start worrying about catching up. Start stressing out that I haven’t broke the 10,000 word mark yet. Thinking that I’m going to fall so far behind, that the goal of 50,000 words by the end of the month becomes more of a dream than a possibility.
So, I really don’t know what to do at this point. I feel like I’m coming down with a cold. I feel like I’m sleeping too long. I feel like I’m stuck. Stuck again. Digging through terabytes of information looking for what color a certain fern was back in the day. I need to get moving again. I need to get back to writing.
If you’ve got any thoughts on how to best this personal demon, I’ll gladly listen. All I can think to do is really the simplest thing. It’s what I’m best at. It may not turn out like I thought, but then most stories never do, as they have a habit of writing themselves.
I’m going to go back to writing.
._._.
