Today, I wrapped up my planning for the second scene in the story, and I was able to finish it more efficiently by forcing myself to stick to a progress goal.
So far, I have found progress goals elusive in the planning phases of my writing. If I set a goal to finish a character profile or a setting card, but no particular time limit, I will go into far more depth than I need and essentially waste time, though it still feels like I’m getting work done. It’s largely self-deception in the end.
When I sat down to write today, I had three steps I needed to complete before I could start working on the actual scene: I needed to do a character profile for a minor character that appears in the scene (his appearance is particularly important), I had to describe the setting, and I had to know what the next scene in my POV character’s arc would be so that I could make sure that the conclusion drove her logically to that point.
That could have taken me a couple days of meandering writing, but I decided to push myself to finish it in one, by focusing on only the essential points that mattered for the draft. When I was setting up my first scene, I went into more detail on the setting and minor characters than I needed. Setting and minor characters exist to define my hero, so I only need to described them to the level necessary to achieve that goal.
This time, I was able to compress the writing time. Tomorrow, I’ll find out if what I produced is enough to serve my needs in the writing.