MOPNoWriMo Day 4: Gatecrashers (2/2/2012)

Day four: Target wordcount: 3000 (on the road). Words written: 2700 (slacking off because I have credit from yesterday, but about 2000 of those were written on the Central Line in and out of Tottenham Court Road so I refuse to feel bad about it)

A chapter and a half-chapter today, in which my erstwhile hero finally gets some decent page-time instead of being usurped by his supporting cast. Or that was what the plan said, but I seem to have a gatecrasher. Some refugee whose existence I’d never even imagined until about three chapters ago is now hanging out with my hero trying valiantly to be interesting enough to last. Give that he (gender TBC) has lasted a chapter and a half and shows no sign of going away, I suspect he’ll succeed.

This is a case of a character spontaneously to fill a hole. My hero was supposed to be travelling with someone else at the moment, with whom he was supposed to have a falling out later. Writing out their first scene together made it clear that any delay was only ever going to look like procrastination and they went and had their falling out right there and then, thus leaving him unexpectedly alone and in need of comapny; and so, like taking a new lover on the rebound, this newcomer jumps in to fill a vacant space and seems a delight of new possibilities. Continuing with the same analogy, I suspect he stands a fair chance of turning out to be a complete disaster who’s soon trying to tell me how to run my plot, demands I stop seeing all my minor characters so I can write more page-time for him, and finally blows everything up in my face about two-thirds of the way through when I’m just starting to steer a course towards the final act.

Still, he’s in. For now. Ever the optimist or ever desperate, I’m really not sure…

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