I don’t know if there’s a saying or phrase one utters when starting work on a new book but if there is one, let it be said here. Writing on Loopback has officially begun and while it’s been a little slow-going (my available time to write has been extremely limited) progress has still been made.
The world building took a little longer than I thought but in discussing key plot points with my wife, I found what worked and what needed tweaking. She’s a stickler for time travel inconsistencies so this is something I know needs to be perfect. Luckily Back to the Future is my favorite movie of all time and I consider it one of the most consistent and accurate time travel stories told. Being a student of Marty McFly and Doc Brown, I believe, gives me an advantage in knowing what to do and not do with this book. If I keep close to my outline and not get ‘cute’ with time travel tricks, I think Loopback can be really successful as a novel.
Interestingly enough, the book has had some false starts and sticking points in this early stage. For starters, I don’t have complete character descriptions for most of the people in the book. I’ve decided to just ‘go with it’ and add things in as I find them necessary whereas a personality and good dialogue can supplement descriptors that may mean nothing to some readers. This is quite a departure from Spirit Hackers where I had each person not only described in a one-sheet but I also had reference pictures for their profiles. Of course if this doesn’t work out, I can always fix these issues in editing.
Finally, my first chapter was half-written and then scrapped. I envisioned Loopback to be told in first-person but I quickly saw it was not working. Perhaps it’s from never writing a full-length book in first POV or something else but each sentence was a struggle to format and there was no flow. After working on it for an hour, I moved it to the side and started again. Thirty minutes later, chapter 1 was complete.
There’s plenty more to say and report on with Loopback, even in its infancy but I’m going to keep its debut post here on Copious Notes (relatively) short and sweet. Plus it gives more more to blog about later on. 😉
Loopback Progress: 6,641 words, chapter 4 half-way complete
Congrats on moving forward! Great progress! I wrote an 82k rough that I promptly tossed away because it was all written in present tense. Glad it only took you a chapter to discover 1st person wasn’t working!
Getting started is always tough. As much prewriting as I’ve been trying to do, I’m always changing things as I go. Good luck!