Going Off On A Tangent

I've been striving to come up with an incident that makes a new character relevant to my story-in-progress. She's an interesting addition to my manuscript, but after introducing her previously unseen presence, I had to find her purpose in the story. She's definitely an antagonist and more than a little off-balance, but I balked at having her perform some trite act, like kidnapping my MC or, I don't know, threatening to blow up a building.

In the end, I decided that psychological terror would be more compelling. So now she's committing some unseen acts that my protagonist is blaming on others ~ because, after all, this new woman is my MC's "friend". I like the subtlety of this approach, and after all, this isn't meant to be the big scene (which is already written).

Because these scenes will need to be slotted into my manuscript, and I'm not sure where, I started a new document. My new trick is to type this brainstorming in red font, which gives me a mental "out". Red signifies that nothing I write is set in stone, and it's freeing. So yesterday I free-formed it, but it swerved off into parts unknown and grew to be quite lengthy. I knew I needed to increase my word count, but perhaps not by this much.

I haven't yet faced the conundrum that some previously written scenes will probably need to be redone if I keep all of yesterday's words. And frankly I don't even know where all this new narrative is heading. I'm hoping that if I just keep going, things will sort themselves out.

One might say, well, if you'd only outlined the story ahead of time, you wouldn't have these issues. Incorrect. I can't plan stories. That's not a talent I possess. I just write, and eventually ideas come to me. When I started this story, the unseen character was simply a name on a desk plate. She wasn't meant to ever be seen. Her temporary leave was an excuse for my MC to be offered a job; nothing more. My scenes build from organic events. If I'd tried to outline, this person never would have even crossed my mind. Unfortunately, linear writing is proving to be an issue with this one. Had my word count not been so low, I wouldn't have even tried to add new events, but I will concede that this new character's inclusion really adds to the tension. And there are few things female readers like more than a treacherous woman.

I will treat this book like a giant puzzle that I'm determined to solve. In the end I might wind up frustrated and tip the table over in disgust. I will, however, try to practice patience.