Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Genre Frontiers

For the past few months I've had a character and plot brewing in my mind for a science-fiction novel, a genre I've never written in (a genre I don't read a whole lot in, either, at least not yet). It's definitely going to be a rather dark novel with a villain type as the main character. I'm actually rather excited about the character, and I do have quite a bit formulated in my mind.

I'm just having a much harder time than usual bringing anything out to the page. So far I've only been able to write sketch-scenes (more like exercises and such). Usually I don't have that sort of problem. The first sentence is the hardest, but as soon as that's down the rest just comes as it wants. That's usually my way of things--my stories and characters really write themselves. I very rarely have any inclination to outline or do exercises or take notes--with the exception of the saga I've been working on for several years, but that's only to keep things straight, especially as the characters and basics have been through some rather extreme changes.

So now I'm trying to figure out if I'm having trouble starting with this because it's a different type of story than usual, or if that's just the character's style. He is rather nefarious, so, I wouldn't put it past him, but still. It probably doesn't help that I generally prefer to write one thing at a time, and I'm still working on the re-haul of the first part of the saga. So, there's my ramble for the month. XD