Slow but Steady

So I'm making progress on Chapter 6. Unfortunately, my full time job has been incredibly busy lately. Usually, it's possible for me to carve out at least twenty or thirty minutes during my lunch hour and jot some thoughts down either on paper or on the computer. On some lucky days, I can even spend the majority of my lunch hour writing. However, over the past few weeks, I haven't had ANY time to write except evenings and weekends.

Chapter 6 is very detailed. So was Chapter 5. That's why they have been so hard to write. Chapter 6 is almost all dialog. There are two main scenes, each with dialog between a couple of key characters. The biggest challenge has been how to keep the chapters interesting with all this dialog. After all, no one wants to read a passage like the following:

"Blah, blah, blah," he said.
"La De Da," she replied.
"Blah, blah, blah," he begged.

That's not very interesting. I've got to insert some action between the dialog or I'll lose the reader. I think I'm doing a decent job of it, although I could easily be wrong. The other challenge in Chapter 6 is that I'm trying to insert some hints as to what's coming in the later chapters. This is trickier. I can't just come out and tell the reader that X knows Y about Z and it's how X can W. I have to insert a subtle hint here and there. "X smiled at an old memory" or "the harsh tone she'd always hated crept into his voice", etc. Simply keeping track of all of these hints is exhausting. I've got a five page Word document with all of the different facts and figures I need.

Well, I've blogged long enough. I need to get back to working on Chapter 6. I hope I can finish it tonight.