Necessary detail or flannel…

I took on the National Novel Writing Month challenge, to attempt to write 50,000 words of a new novel in one month, this month… I first took on this challenge last year and I was thrilled to complete it… but this year I seem to be struggling. I got off to a slow start where I just wasn’t hitting the target number of words each day. Then we had a day out in London, then we went to Iceland for five days and now I am really struggling… I’m really not sure I’m going to make it in the seven remaining days.

I am trying to write my novel properly, not just churning out any old rubbish, trying to write in the way I usually do, and for this first draft do the best I can. I am writing a sequel to a sequel, which is a big challenge to me as I’ve never done anything remotely like this before. The sequel was a big challenge, this is even bigger.

My difficulty with the sequel has been multiplied by its sequel (or maybe I should start talking about the final part of the trilogy?) I wanted the sequel to follow on from the first story, but at the same time be a stand-alone novel, so if anyone came to it first they would fully understand all that was happening, and yet not have any surprises spoiled if they went back to read the first part. Now on this third part it has become impossible, not to explain more fully what has happened before. The reader has to know enough about the characters to understand why they do certain things, they have to know some of their history to make sense of the plot. However, I don’t want to fill in so much back story that the reader gets bogged down in the history of the action, I want them to be reading along at a spanking pace and not groan as there is another wadge of biography… and yet if I am too sparing in the background detail, if the references are too slight, they may be missed or not catch the reader’s notice…

A dilemma… and because I have only nine days left of the challenge it’s one i can’t worry about too much at the moment. Come December and can continue the story with less of a gallop, more of a gentle canter!