Day 3 Nano -- Plantsing Away (with story segment)

I think I remember telling people I'm a Plantser in NaNo parlance -- I plan, but only so far, using a set of scene synopses instead of a full outline. This is easy to do in Scrivener, which uses a notecard schema for chapter and scene synopses.

When writing, even at 2000 words a day,  I'm restructuring my outline by adding and moving those scenario cards. Yesterday, I realized that NOTHING plotwise was happening between visiting The Jungle, a geographical entity which includes Chicago and Detroit, and Salt Lake City. That's hundreds of miles, folks. 1400 miles to be exact. I'm sure I could skip over that segment of flyover country, but given that one of the themes of the story is self-discovery ("It's 'Eat, Pray, Love' meets 'North by Northwest!') I easily could give my protagonist a few pertinent experiences there. I've added a chapter -- actually, two half-chapters -- to facilitate some adventures here.

I do minor editing on spelling and grammar in the writing stage, but don't get too bent out of shape about it, because that's not the idea of the writing stage. The idea is to get a first draft (or in the case of NaNo, half a first draft in a month).

OOPS -- back to writing!

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Today's excerpt, written yesterday:

I considered my options for getting off-campus. There was a riot outside the building and my captors within. I didn’t believe the police, or the Guard who had joined them, would be any more sparing of bullets than my captors had been.  

The steam tunnel doors hung open. I had heard about the legendary steam tunnel system — maps of the tunnels existed, handed down and providing adventures to generations of students who could withstand the heat. The cameras that protected students from heatstroke no longer functioned, so the risk was higher than in bygone eras. I taught all of this in Intro to Anthropology each year.

I, however, did not have a map, and imagined myself wandering through the tunnels, some of which were low enough that the explorer had to crawl through. There were rumors of dead ends and caved-in sections — wait. Somewhere in my notes, up in my office, I had documentation of a Charles DeWitt who had, in 2020, painted guide signs in glow-in-the dark paint. All I needed was a flashlight, which I found on a hardhat by the tunnel doors. I flipped the switch; the light functioned.

Now, a destination. I thought about where I was, Hartley Hall, at the north central point of the Quad. My destination was under the Quad to Alfred Wyndham Lab, the science building nearest the east gate. I knew that the tunnel would be anything but straight, given how the tunnels branched out to serve all the buildings. 

What I would need besides the light? I took a long drink from the utility sink in the corner and relieved myself in a dank, muddy corner — I didn’t care about anything but being safe. What else — lock picks. I didn’t have lockpicks in case any doors were locked. Lockpicks — I searched for the smallest bladed screwdrivers I could find, precision screwdrivers, which I found in a large drawer on a workbench labeled SHOP. I swiped the two smallest screwdrivers and a diamond file so I could file them thin if needed. My father, the cryptographer, had taught me how to disable locks from simple tumbler locks to advanced cryptobiometric ones.

Then I charged through the doors into the unknown.