On that scene you first thought of, at long last

When I sat down in late October to think about my Nano contribution for this 2012, I had a title, a protagonist and one scene in my head that the whole novel is built on. I had an idea there would be some sort of problem early on that my protagonist would face, but hadn't specified it, and even a rough location for most of the events.

But the 'big scene' would come later. I just didn't know when.

That tends to be the level of my planning. I stagger on from there and let the thing 'flow' even if at times it is more like a glacier grinding its way downhill rather than a bubbling stream of creativity.

I know someone who is doing Nano this year (and who succeeded last year) and does a meticulous amount of planning before writing, right down to the expected number of words in each chapter. I admire that degree of detailing but I can't do it myself.

Anyway, the key scene I envisaged a while ago has taken me around 43,000 words to reach. I fully expected it to take a few thousand words (maybe 10k or so) but as the Gemstone story unfolded and more things came into play then the reason I had this original idea was pushed further and further back.

This supposedly all-important scene may provide some action but it might not be as big as I had originally thought. This may be because other scenes on the way to it grew in size and value. They certainly told me more about my characters than I had thought at the outset.

For example, I now have a character list of around ten people which may not be excessive but at least three of them were introduced 'out of the blue' and cemented themselves into the story.

But isn't that the joy of writing a story? You discover as you go.

One last point on characters. I don't know how anyone else does this, but my characters reveal themselves to me in their conversation with others. Their response to what they are told or the type of questions they ask or subjects they raise tends to give substance to an outline on the paper. I like my characters to talk and show me who they are.

No, I don't shout at them or demand they do something else for me, but I do like to hear them.