Monday, October 4, 2010

Oct Dare Day 3 - Floofy Books and Floofy Scenes

Okay maybe the scenes aren't exactly "floofy" but they're all loose and in the process of being rearranged.

Today I wrote a good solid 1000 words like I was supposed to. But even better, I looked again at the long sequence in the middle where the main plot takes a break. I felt that it was going for too long in one secondary direction - following the characters but not the mystery for three whole chapters. Now I have strong threads of the main story to weave through it and it all works better. But it requires a lot of rearranging. Whole conversations are being moved around, like when you rearrange your books.

Part of the reason this took so long is because I wrote a subplot as a whole arc. It all just fit together continuously. Like a little short story. Rough drafts are often like that. Especially in a character-based series. It was so neatly self-contained, however, that it was hard to wedge anything else in there. So finally I pulled it apart enough to see how it works with the rest.

The scenes are now all lying loosely spread out on the table. (Well not literally. The cats would disarrange them further. But on the computer and in my head, they're spread out and ready for work.)

And I did indeed revisit the floofy books scene. And I got to add a straight woman when a deputy asks Karla why she thinks that the badguys might be after a book, and she says "Because my books are all floofy and it reminds George of an eggroll." The deputy may be wondering if they're both drunk.

Tomorrow I hope to rework a dramatic moment that originally happened in the middle of this sequence, but it will be much better (and open up the story to much more fun) at the end.

1 comment:

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

Glad you were able to rework the floofy scene! And good luck with the dramatic moment you want to revise.