For about five months or so now, I've had these characters in my head. I knew who they were, I knew they belonged together, I knew which world they belonged to, but I didn't have a story for them. All my vague ideas were too close to something else I'd already written and I hate to repeat myself. There was no great rush, though, to figure it out since they were third on my list.
I mailed off project number one to my agent, now I've got a rough draft done on project number two, which meant it was time to figure out these two characters and what their story was. Only nothing helpful was coming to me.
This had me putting together an email summing up what I knew for my two writing buddies and hoping to bounce some ideas off of them. Nothing I came up with for the email as far as story goes was exciting, but I sent it off and figured we'd talk about it at some point.
And then I went to bed last night...
This particular hero took over and I saw the scene from his point of view, heard his internal monologue, and got his thought processes. I also heard him talking to the heroine and the two of them finally gave me their story! Woot!
I think pulling all my information together for that email got my subconscious working, and while I was unaware of what was going on, it was pulling together a plot. How cool is this?
So I'm lying in bed and my brain is spinning. This is a prime reason why I sometimes get insomnia--my mind is churning and I'm trying to remember everything. I decided to get up and send a quick email. I went back to bed and expected my mind to keep working, but instead I was asleep about two minutes later. Wow. I ended up with about 6 hours of sleep and a storyline.
All I have to say is I love it when a plan comes together.
