Writing Blog Number 2

20241119 - NaNo-19

NaNoWriMo #19

Day 19.

Cryptid story is finished!

Woo-hoo!

Just under 4k words to clear it off today, between bouts of helping people in my usual Tuesday library.

So, after the tragic death yesterday, I was ready to kill the lazy guy, but he went and saved the two palaeontologists! They killed a few of the animals, but they are still out there. And there is a HFN ending, and the lazy guy lost his marriage, so he didn’t get off scot-free.

Alright, and that is what a pantser sometimes has to do. We have to let our characters tell us where the story is going and not force it. As soon as that one character convinced me she had to die, the story just kicked along. Trust your characters – it’s their story and you are just the scribe. At least, that’s how I approach it.

What this also means is that I had 6 possible endings I detailed a few posts ago, and not one of them was where the story ended up. It was a weird way to go for me, without that end-goal so clear after halfway through, and yet this story worked and I am happy with a first draft.

I was going to leave it there for the day, but the demon story hit me and so I did a quick couple of hours typing there as well.

I introduced the two main characters – Joanne, a psychologist, and Anne, a girl she is looking after. And then I introduced the work Joanne is doing. She is helping the victims of a cult… and it turns out that Joanne escaped from a similar cult as a child as well. Joanne is established as being a physically strong woman.

Now, unlike the cryptid story, I have the ending of this one. Lots of allusions to the number 5, so after 4 of Joanne’s closest are killed by an entity, she needs to protect the fifth to stop the creature staying in the world, and her physical strength and long hair are going to be a part of that.

I have some notes about the ending already.

This story could flow easily. Maybe another 50k worder, I think.

So…

Cryptid words today – 3998
Total words in cryptid story – 50234
Demon words – 1750
Total words today – 5748
Total words– 99452