Daily "Fateplay" rewrite journal, Day 7.

I've never done a book this way before.

I wrote a first draft that I thought was relatively solid, but decided that I needed to change some major things at the beginning. They were things that would affect the rest of the book but not so much that the basic plot couldn't be kept.

I decided to do the rewrite in a methodical way, 10 pages a day, no more, no less.

What I didn't foresee was giving myself that much time would also give me time to come up with new ideas. Most of these ideas are additions and embellishments. This is good in that I write sparsely and I have always felt that my stories could do with a few more complications.

I'm not trying to explain most of these complications logically but feeling my way. This story is SF in structure, but fantasy in explanation. Science fantasy, if you will. I originally thought that by thinking about it and researching it, I could put in a SF underpinning, but when it came time, I'm relying on my imagination even more than before.

Nevertheless, it has to be internally consistent, so that's what I'm striving for.

I'm not trying in my mind to nail down the structure but to do it intuitively. As in yesterday's thought that I needed something dramatic and major to happen, something that would "cleave" the book and set it off on a different course.

It so happened that I had a major character who I needed to do something with, and that killing him violently fit perfectly. (Writers are weird.) So I know I want this to happen, but I'm still sort of dimly envisioning how it happens. I know I want a break from current reality for the two major characters (Zach and Numera) which creates a stronger bond with each other because they're the only two to see it, and finally, I'd like to add a new companion along the way.

I don't know who that companion is--nor can the companion explain too much. But that can all be fixed by simple explanations. ("I am not allowed to interfere with your reality.) I'm trying to decide if it's a sprite that everyone else can see or everyone else sees it as something normal, when Zach and Numera see it as--I don't know, a fox, a dwarf, a robot--something extraordinary.

It's funny. I was thinking about some kind of little bird, flitting about their head and when one of the other characters asks, "How do you know that?" They answer, "A little bird told us." Nah.

So that's the feeling out part. I know basically the beats I want to insert, and vaguely what they entail, but not of the details. Giving myself all day, or even longer, to coax out those details is what I'm allowing myself this time around. At this rate, it will be months before this book is finished and that's all right.