Frustrated Beyond Frustrated

My goal for the week was to get the first four chapters written.  Well, I almost made it; I got about 14,000 words written then I went into a deep brain freeze.

I think the brain freeze is due to two problems.

The novel is set aboard destroyers during World War II.  I want it to be a story of internal struggles driven by the war - I don't want it to be about the war.  I don't want an action thriller with lots of guns going off and people getting killed. I feel that type of writing is easy and I want to offer the reader more. Something to think about such as moral dilemmas, cultural conflicts, bigotry, search for meaning, or something positive.

The second problem flows from the first, I think. I have been working on the characters but I have not been working WITH the characters enough to really get to know them in a way that I can say I understand and empathize with their internal conflicts.  Until I know these characters well, I will be stuck with a plot driven shoot-em-up novel which is what I don't want.

I have a great line-up of interesting characters.  Here are a few:

Piper Feakes, an Australian coast watcher who goes by the name Pip. He has a general tendency to understate the facts and is not above a little petty larceny. He is the son of a convicted buglar.

Captain Kakuta is the commander of a Japanese cruiser and O'Toole's nemesis.  Son of a diplomat, his father married a Chinese woman. He was raised in several foreign countries and is sensitive cultural differences and the nationalistic tendency of all societies that discounts the value of different cultures. He has grave doubts about the war and realizes Japan can't win.  On top of that, his grandparents and family members on his mother's side were murdered by the Japanese Army when Japan invaded China. Despite his doubts and hatred for what Japan did to his mother's family, he soldiers-on to perform his duties as a naval commander.

Admiral Yasuda was pressed into service by the Japanese Navy to work on new cryptographic equipment. He is a mathematician and has devised an unbreakable code that will alter the course of the war - unless O'Toole stops him.

There are several more interesting characters; probably too many to actually use in the story but these are some of the more interesting characters in my mind.

This next week, I intend to write several "skits" with the main characters that would cover situations that the characters would find themselves in and would put them in conflict with their environment.  I am hoping that will thaw my brain freeze.