I had a great opportunity to just write all morning, carrying on the momentum from last night. I wrote 1200 words. Finished up the scene about Hem’s failed attempt at assassinating Governor Fuller. It was actually three short scenes.
My research for today involved looking at train routes between Dhaka and Kolkata (or like they said back then, Dacca and Calcutta). There was a train that ran regularly between Sealdah and Dacca Cantt, which was stopped after partition. It’s been restarted now. A weird thing I was wondering about though: They were looking to assassinate Gov Fuller at Naihati, which is 40km from Calcutta. I couldn’t figure out if the train route would stop at Naihati, or if they would have to go all the way to Sealdah and then take another train to Naihati. I made them meet up with other Anushilan Samiti members and get some guns and head to Naihati by jutka. I’m not sure that’s the most ideal trip, in hindsight. Maybe it’s better to just have them stop at Naihati.
And more research on food. They are having lunch at someone’s house who isn’t well off. What do they eat? They are waiting for a train, with many people, including several families. What is everyone snacking on?
While writing this, I saw Hem as a frustrated, burned out man who has been working on one project for too long, and failing hard at it (now why does that sound familiar). He is actually glad this attempt fails, because he doesn’t have a plan for what to do next. There’s no big picture. They don’t have great tools to achieve their aims. They have no infrastructure. If they succeeded, the full force of the British government would come down on them, and were they even prepared for it? He wants a do-over. There’s an annoying feeling within him that there’s a better way to do whatever they are planning on, and he needs more knowledge and training, and better ideas.
At the end, he decides to head to Europe to learn about bombmaking.
Now I’m trying to write a scene with him in Europe, and I feel stuck. Here he is, mingling with anarchists, his education getting funded by an influential anarchist leader, and seeking out Russian bomb doctors. He finds he has to go to London, and remembers the two Indian men he had met at Mrs. Cama’s party, who were trying to write a book. They had a house in London he could safely stop at. And he writes to them….
I need one illustrative scene of that.
Maybe something like he’s in some European country doing all these cloak-and-dagger things trying to meet someone in secret, who will tell him where he can find a bomb doctor. And all he gets is a clue that he has to go to London.
Gotta make it active, got to keep the characters moving, preferably in exotic locales. This is in stark contrast to my natural tendency to put my character feeling confused in the middle of a busy scene, and then focusing on their internal monologue. It works for some scenes, like at the beginning of a new section, where there’s lots of stuff to talk about. But it doesn’t keep readers engaged enough.
I’m pretty happy with today’s progress so far, and I think it’s helping to debrief here after each day’s writing.