Progress

I didn't write much over the weekend, but I wrote enough today to be on schedule for the first time. Hurrah! 26,680 words. I very much suspect the story will be finished before I hit 50,000 (there are already 26,000 I wrote before this month - so we're looking at about 70,000 as the finished length, which seems about right for a first draft).

I still haven't properly written the courtroom scene. I drafted the two important speeches, and what happens afterwards, but there's a lot of research and a bit of writing left to go.

I'm struggling a bit with my narrative structure. Not much is happening to two of my three narrating characters, but lots is happening to the third, so she's currently writing a mammoth chapter. I think I can get it done in 4000 words though, and I'm pretty sure there's one of a similar size earlier on (most average at around 2000, with quite a lot of variation). And I think that will be OK, though I can't really tell until I read the whole thing, of course.

Another problem I've identified is that two of my characters (one main, one secondary) are supposed to be misanthropists, but they end up liking most of the characters we meet. I'll have to do something about that.

And the current chapter is basically a love story. I don't know much about love stories, and how to write them without being clichéd.