Letting the muse speak
This week has seen me continuing to write my SF novella. I found when I wrote the fantasy one back in November that the looser plan I had for the story carried me through the narrative well. That was the first time I'd written a longer form piece without having worked out a detailed chapter plan for it first. Instead I'd wanted to experiment with a looser plan based on Syd Field's three act structure for film scripts. For novel planning I've long been a fan of a Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey structure, based on Joseph's Campbell's mythology work. But I felt that, as I was only writing a maximum of 40,000 words, I could afford to start writing with only the bare bones of the story mapped out. It didn't feel as big a risk. I worked out that Acts One and Three needed to be roughly 7,500 words long, and Act Two roughly 15,000. I wasn't sure whether my narrative would fit that structure, and when I started writing the novella I sen