Rachel: Thinking "out loud".

So I've been sitting here and planning things out for just one of my characters all afternoon. That is how lazy I am. This isn't going to be that interesting of a post, just to warn you early on; I just wanted to type out some of my thoughts and, well, think "out loud" as it were. Sometimes that helps me out, and what better place to talk mindlessly about my ideas than SAAWAKM?

I have been working purely on ZeCat. I'm going character by character with the outlining that I'm doing, and once I have all of my main characters mapped out I will do a second draft of them, if need be, to relate all of my subplots to each other. This is possibly easier said than done, so I'm going to have to watch it. I have already been forced to think about aspects of Death List that I had barely considered up to this point, namely details that are just as important to the book as the plot is. What I am working on right now is the location of Paradise City, the city where all of my characters originate from. I can't remember how much about Death List I've told you all about, but it takes place in the distant future at some point (I had an exact year, but I'm starting to reconsider), right? In my version of the future everyone lives in cities, which are the remains of "supercities", or cities that once spanned enormous distances to accommodate the once-massive population. Because the remaining cities are what is left of old supercities, current cities are surrounded by old skyscrapers and whatnot that stretches on and on and on until they eventually crumble and become countryside. The cities that people live in now are walled in and are very separate from each other. They are so separate, in fact, that the inhabitants of each city have no idea that the inhabitants of another even exist. They don't even know what lies outside of the towering city wall. All anyone knows is what they were born into and that's it. So now that you know that, back to what I was talking about: Paradise City's location. I have decided that old supercity Paradise City is about the size of Oregon and is where Oregon once was (states no longer exist, just cities). This seems like sort of a random area for it to be, but I put a lot of thought into this! That way my characters have access to the Pacific Ocean as well as some kind of grassy nice environments once they get out of city ruins. I'll talk about why that's important in a different post; that gets way to involved.

Anyway, so now I know where Paradise City is, which is totally necessary for where I am in planning for ZeCat. I'm really pleased, because I almost have his entire...thing...planned out until the end. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is for me. I rarely know how my characters are going to get to where they're going until I have to directly address it in the book, but now I'm ahead of the game by my standards. And you know, I never realized it before, but when you sit and plan things out ideas just start coming to you. The story kind of tells itself. It's awesome! I have events written in for ZeCat that didn't even exist before today. Once I give you all the lowdown on what the heck my book is even about (in horrifying detail) I'll describe ZeCat's travels to you all. And everyone else's. But I kind of just realized what time it is and I have to get up early tomorrow (...goats...) so I have to end this post here. Until tomorrow, everyone.

Oh, and one last thing. I changed the quote of the week even though I have no idea if it's been a week yet, so I hope nobody minds.

-Iridian