The first half of my #WIP was exhausting. No plotting involved. Michael a master vampire. He accepts a mission to go into Hell and look for something. Hell is a prison for souls, so then the world building begins.

As I wrote chapters 1&2, the scale of it started to emerge. 85 billion people in varying states of decay. 6 continents with different cultures and ideologies, cults, factions, religions, transport systems, cities, wildlife, histories, wars, vendetta's...

Firearms, ammunition, magic, food, booze, drugs, clothing, shops, farming, infrastructure, laws of physics, morality, deceit, buildings companies, exclusion zones, temples, artifacts had to be built and named. That's the easier bit...

Then there's the mission, the people waiting to attack, the people the MC meets and picks up information from. Mutations, illnesses, misleading information, markets, cannibalism, weather systems, time distortion, madness, addiction...

I'm not sure where these things come from when we're #writing. They just seem to emerge from a fog. Because I pants it, I get to points where I have to take a step back and look at it. I judge it as if it was a film. If a scene is mediocre but necessary, I have to rework it...

If I have a better idea for the plot to improve the pace and story, I have to insert it then read through and look for continuity errors. I'm letting chaotic subconscious factors loose to bring out characters from some part of my mind ...

To be true to surrealism, I have to let a lot of stuff go in uninterpreted. I have to let the strange and irrational take over or it just won't work. Characters then take on their own lives, and I have little or no control over them..

Then the book isn't an expression of my thoughts and opinions. It's a Molotov cocktail of some of my most dangerous experiences in real life, plus anxieties & things I've witnessed online.

Then I have to do plausibility check. Would he do that? Would he know he's being lied to?

At what point would he doubt or suspect? How anti-hero do I want him to be? Is he ok to torture people in Hell? Then something really creepy started happening, and it's particularly disturbing when you're writing about the Devil...

At one point, the devil releases a plague to punish the people in Hell. Then in the real world Coronavirus appeared. That was about the 4th thing that appeared in real world after I wrote it in the book, and that's unnerving...

I know the direction it's going, and I'm happy with the overall story but it has vast potential to offend people, not least religious people.
I wasn't aiming to create a fable like the cry wolf story but it's becoming that and the ending may be happy with a bitter twist.

I'm unsure if it's too complex. I don't think it is. First person internal chatter serves as a tour guide. But compared to the typical detective movie there is a lot more happening. There's none of the Columbo thing of turning up asking a few polite questions...

Originally, I wanted it to be fairly straight forward but I had to choose between fantasy or gritty, and it could only go the gritty route. The scale of the place really dictates the size of the story. The environment dictates the nature of the characters.

I think it's impossible to tell an honest story and not offend people. It will definitely trigger some people and I'll probably get lots of hate but so what. I'll just be relieved when it's finished.

There may be typos in this thread. Apologies.