Headlights

 

Someone once compared his writing technique to driving down a dark road, and all you can see ahead is what's in the headlights.

That's my writing style too. I know what the experts say about plotting, with story cards, timelines, character "bibles," flow charts, and 8x10 glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is to be used as evidence that I know what I'm doing.

And since I'm writing French steampunk, the locomotive carriage lamp is not as bright as halogen headlights.

I'm just finishing up chapter 13 of a planned [sic] 20-chapter novel. My heroine has jumped forward in time to 2030 from 1841 while trying to return to 1843 after having been transported back to 1838 when boarding a haunted train. She's now lying in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, with no idea how to get home. Meanwhile, back at the camp, my hero's body has been taken over by a mad scientist who has been experimenting with animating dead flesh and transferring minds into the creatures he makes, and the lady-knives of the Order of Duval are preparing to cross the aether in a giant Faraday cage to seek out the heroine.

And I have no idea how it's going to work out.

That isn't to say I don't know the ending. I do. 

I'm just not sure how I'm going to get there yet. I know it involves the Franklin Institute's Bradley 60000 locomotive engine, and maybe some Tesla coils. I know that there is a tragic death coming (no spoilers). I know there's a great game of cribbage with a double-skunking. 

But none of that is in the carriage lamp yet.