Managing Your Characters’ Logistics
Today's post is in response to an increasing trend I've noticed in books-in-progress — a lack of what I call logistics. When you're in the flow of writing, or you're facing serious time management issues while writing because you're juggling so many other things in your life, logistics tend to vaporize into the ether. Logistics are the basic point A to point B actions that your characters take in a scene that help it flow logically. They're a critical part of the structure of scenes. For instance, imagine that you’re reading a scene where two characters are having a conversation, and one of them hands the other a book. But the book materialized out of nowhere. There's no description of where it came from. Was the character keeping it in a bag or suitcase? (That wasn't described either?) Whoops. Small Details Are Sometimes Big Imagine that your character is in a queue waiting to buy an apple and cream cheese danish for breakfast. He’s distracted by a ...