Day 7: 10,829 words
Well, I fell a little further behind tonight, but I’m still in it to win it.
Much of the chapter on which I’m now working is taken up by testimonies. When we have done in-country training for my previous LEAMIS trips, we ran through how to give our testimonies as a preparation for being called upon during worship services. But what gets shared during training is sometimes quite different from, and more personal than, what we’d share during the church services.
It was, therefore, true to life to have a chapter where my characters tell their stories as a training exercise. Although my viewpoint character has a lot in common with me, the other characters are quite fictional; none of them is a close parallel of any individual person from my previous trips. I had to be careful not to have their fictional stories be anything like any of the real stories that I’ve heard shared during in-country training.
This chapter is probably too expository; when and if I go back and revise this novel with an eye towards marketing it, the testimonies may well be taken out. But right now, they are not only helping with my word count but they’ve been a helpful way to explore my characters’ backgrounds, which will help me as I think about the characters in moving the story forward.
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