Pre-Plotting Day 1

I did most of the pre-plotting on Dollmaker today. And get this - I actually got something from asking my characters questions and having them answer in first-person for the FIRST TIME EVER, which was very exciting. I quite like this villain - he's much better developed and more sympathetic than any other villain I've ever written or thought about writing, while still being... well, y'know, evil. This is rather nice.

Since I said I'd talk more about this project... here goes: The Dollmaker is shaping up to be a 40,000 word dark fantasy short novel. The idea originated months ago, but when I found out that Holly Lisle, one of my favorite writers of books about writing (though I've never read any of her actual novels beyond samples), was going to start an e-zine... well, I wanted to submit something, and I had this idea that wasn't quite complex enough to make a full novel, but a short novel? Well. Everyone needs a summer project, right?

Eheh.

So, here's my summary sentence of this project:

"An adolescent orphan boy becomes apprentice to his city's Dollmaker, unknowing of his master's specialty: making human dolls."

I've done all the pre-plotting. Generating scenes and outlining comes tomorrow.