Not its plot yet. After only 25,000 words of rough exploratory draft, I can’t expect everything.
So I keep writing and hoping those secrets will come together into something more than scattered tensions if I press on–will become something I can shape into the draft after this one, which, if I’m lucky or persistent, just might have the plot this one lacks.
I wonder what it would be like, to have a writing process that wasn’t so very much a leap of faith.
Also: when in the middle of chapter 7, at an utterly inappropriate time when lives are at stake, a character wants to infodump backstory? In first exploratory draft, you let them, and you even smile and thank them as you try to find your way back to the story proper again when they’re through. Because first drafts are like that.