The Tuesday morning weather was grey and grumpy. I’d just arrived at work, having left slightly earlier than usual, expecting the roads to be packed with the hustle and bustle of back-to-school traffic. As it transpired, most of the kids weren’t returning until the following day. I’d miscalculated, as per usual. So there I was, sat in the car park at work with time to burn before clocking approached. I started to ponder the writing doubts that had plagued my thinking over the previous days. With that in mind, I opened my manuscript on my phone and proceeded to write.

Twenty minutes was all it took to hash out another sizeable chunk of text. I even managed to flesh out some earlier paragraphs before time was up, adding a dash of exposition and scene-building which I’d missed the first time around. None of it was planned, I should add. I hadn’t pledged to dedicate a portion of my time that morning to novel work. It was a spur-of-the-moment response, fuelled by an anxiety and frustration itch I was gasping to scratch.

I did the same thing at lunchtime. I’d considered going for a walk to clear my head following a busy morning, but decided against it in favour of further itch-scratching. The morning scribble had inspired me. So again, I wrote. More paragraphs were penned, a couple more details added here and there. I even managed a quick read-through of several paragraphs before break time was up. For the first time in what felt like a while, I didn’t hate what I’d written. In fact, I was quite thrilled by it all. Not that I’m suggesting it’s a well-polished piece of art. It’s not. Many rewrites are still required, but the foundations are there. Michelle and Quinn are coming to life. Their voices are beginning to find their way onto the page, and I like how they sound for the first time in goodness knows how long. Michelle’s melancholy and Quinn’s curiosity dance across the page, telling a tale that feels though it has the potential to grow into something special, provided I continue working at it!

With this newfound confidence, a new fixation started to form. I realised just how fascinated I was by these characters, not to mention the journey I was taking them both on. I wanted to learn more about their pasts in order to better shape their presence. I just had to dig deeper. I knew the general outline of their recent histories, as well as their fates in the run up to chapter one. I knew all of this long before I’d begun penning this version of the story. As for the more intimate details, however, I was a little vague, hoping the gaps would fill themselves as I proceeded to write. The nuance and subtlety that shaped their present was still lost on me. Now that I’d seen them in action, I knew I had to go back and fill in the blanks. I wanted to know as much about them as I could. It was the only way to truly see what made them tick under the hood.

In response to this urge, I found myself creating a new folder in my Google Drive for each of these characters. The aim of these two documents? To chronicle what these two were up to in the year prior to their first meeting. I want to know all about Michelle’s first year in college: the friends she made, the love she formed, and the bonds she lost in the aftermath of her actions. Likewise, I needed to know all about Quinn’s time at the education block following her factory built up. How did she interact with the other droids in her classrooms, how did her friendships play out, and what was her response when those friendships came to a close upon her inevitable distribution to the Roberts household?

These would all be accounts that would be drip-fed throughout the novel. The final versions of these two documents I’d created would never make it into the final text. They’d function as guidelines to help keep me on track as I move these protagonists forward through my story. Think of them as character bibles, designed to inform and jog my memory when required. They are supplementary texts, intended for my eyes only.

One issue with this idea relates back to something I said in an entry from August 11th. Back then, I told myself I’d abstain from world-building for the time being. At the time, I was mostly concerned with avoiding the desire to write out whole Wiki articles about the formation of my story’s fictional empire. These are exercises that have been known to cripple entire projects of mine over the years. My reasons for this were largely to avoid falling into the procrastination trap. If I’m pouring thousands of words and hours into timelines and events that won’t make it into the final body of work, I’m spending less time contributing prose to the primary product. While I hadn’t been explicitly referring to character building at the time of my August 11th entry,  I had made a mental note to myself to extend this rule to characters building also. I had the basics jotted down, and that was considered enough. I just needed to stay away from getting bogged down in full blown biographies.

I suppose a part of me is now going back on my word by creating these two sub-documents. By diving into portions of Michelle and Quinn’s lives which will only partially make their way into the final product, do I risk wasting my time and energy on content that is essentially redundant? Am I engaging in the very activity I’d argued was not necessary to tell this story?

At the time of writing, I suspect the answer is no, albeit with some considerations. I do believe there is a sound logic to my change of heart, provided I do not get too carried away with myself. The year prior to the start of this story is vital in justifying the motives behind Quinn and Michelle’s actions during part one of this book. When we first meet Michelle in chapter one, she has just been released from a six-month detention centre for committing a supposedly “hideous” crime in the eyes of her community. Quinn, on the other hand, is a droid designed to serve Michelle’s household and keep her company. Michelle is isolated from her community, and her parents have purchased Quinn as a proxy companion for their lonely daughter. Of course, Michelle is angry and consumed with guilt over her recent actions, so rejects Quinn’s initial attempts to connect. The story will begin to open up as Michelle’s guilt pushes her to the point in which she confesses all to Quinn. This is the moment Quinn will choose to side with Michelle and question whether the actions her new owner committed were truly wrong, or just wrong in the eyes of a brainwashed community. But in order for this connection to work, I need to fully understand what makes both characters tick. Why would Michelle confess her supposed sins to Quinn, and why would Quinn decide to side with the girl who everyone else hates? The answer lies in that twelve-month block before the start of the novel. It’s here where the magic happens. Multiple events shape how the two of them think and feel about the world; it is these nuances that will serve as the key ingredients for this friendship to form.

To make sure this bond functions and feels believable, I need to properly understand it. I need to chronicle the shift in each character’s journey that led them to where they are on day one of this story. I have to understand it for myself, so I can confidently navigate these two characters to the moment in which they become genuine friends. To do that, I feel I need to get it all down on paper so I can see it in front of me.

This, I believe, is justification enough to relax my previously established rule. I need to lose myself for a little while in these characters’ backstories to properly figure out and justify their actions toward the end of act one. Though I must do so with caution. You see, there is a risk that this could well shift from being a well-intentioned exercise to lay out the emotional architecture of my leads into yet another dead end. If I get too bogged down in the detail, I risk producing tens of thousands of words worth of backstory. This will, of course, result in me kicking the can down the road when it comes to the primary manuscript. It could become yet another form of procrastination. Furthermore, if I end up with too much text, it might do the very opposite of what was intended, becoming too bulky to serve as a useful guidebook. This yearly chronicle must be simple, straightforward, and told in as efficiently as can be. It needs to be enough, but not too much.

I suspect my initial assumptions about world-building as a form of procrastination, though well-intentioned, were somewhat flawed. Yes, it absolutely can pose a risk to productivity, but that doesn’t mean total abstinence is required. It becomes a problem when it’s irrelevant to the wider plot and performed in excess. I was right when I concluded that a robust outline of the formation of my story’s authoritarian government was not necessary. As for Michelle and Quinn’s pasts, however, I absolutely must dive deeper. I must obtain a better feel for the texture of Michelle’s guilt. Likewise, I have to properly grasp why a droid like Quinn would side against the very community she has been conditioned to love. So long as my subconscious does not turn this into yet another detour by blowing the whole exercise wildly out of proportion, this will be a help, not a hindrance.