Over the past week I have been working, on and off, on a short story that is due in just over a week. Originally, I had planned it as more of a gaslight/ gaslamp (steampunk with supernateral elements) genred story. However, I could not get a handle on the motive behind the original undead Big Bad (BB) for my story. I had the what and the how, and tentatively the who, but was struggling on pinpointing the why. The story was going nowhere. Fast.
Finally, I decided that the supernatural BB had to go. I realised that if I made the BB a scientist, I could still use my planned plot device. I traded gaslamp for “straight” steampunk and voila! Suddenly everything fell into place – the new who, the what, the where and finally… the why! Motive, means and opportunity!
Unfortunately this meant I needed to research three different main things/ideas before I could write (and have facts correct). Ugh. Three hours of research later, and I was writing up a storm. The only thing that has slowed me down, over the past two days, is the feeling that I am fighting a virus or sinus infection. I now just have the final two scenes to write and then comes the editing and polishing.
So the moral of the story is that, even when something is planned, I should be flexible and explore other possibilities for a change as it may just get me out of my funk and provide inspiration and more fun!
oh! During my research, my steampunk scientist craving for Victorian knowledge was satisfied. I found an internet site with .pdf scans of actual historical documents – papers presented to the Royal Society (in my case 1862). There is so much information I can now use to start off so many mad scientist hokey research stuff… oh bliss!
The abstracts and research articles are catalogued by year.
http://rspl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/by/year
Have fun!!!!