Day 31 - Knitting The Story

A good day.  A little busy, but I got good work done.  The students at the college where I used to work had their Portfolio Day, so we went and admired their work.  Some very nice portfolios there.  They were particularly good this year -- I saw a lot fewer students who were unprepared.  I think the revamping of that last class has helped.


Today's Progress: 821 words on In Flight, and more knitting the first act together.

The first four chapters are almost there.  A few gaps and redundancies yet, but it's looking less like frankenstein's monster.  I'll need another pass later to remove the redundancies.  (For instance, my protagonist seems to explain the same thing to herself four or five times, but I realize that only the last time matters -- then it can be a part of the actual story movement.  I had to pull the whole first act together, though, before I could see that's where the information belonged -- where it had the most emotional impact.)

I am actually in the midst of that part, and wondering if that's the real place to introduce the hero in more detail, but my brain is tired. I'm going to take one more whack at it tonight, but I decided to post this first so I can just go to bed when I get to the end of my rope.

Oh, and I also developed two variations on a possibly fun flash story. Well, it's a stereotypical woman in jeopardy story, which might make a decent novella if handled well on the detail end.  But I realized a twist that could make it a very fun flash story.  Not sure when I'm going to write it, though.


Eating, Reading, Watching

In celebration of Portfolio Day we had Crispy Shrimp and Sesame Cold Noodles with Hot and Sour Soup.  And tonight I watched Castle.  I did pick out the killer and the second most guilty red herring as soon as they were introduced, but purely on psychology, so the discovery process and solution was still plenty satisfying.

Castle is a well-written show.  (And that's a part of what I meant above about how a stereotypical story could do well if handled well in details.  It doesn't matter if you know the killer the instant you see him if the drama/comedy is well handled.)  And if you want to know about the basics of handling set up, development and payoff of episode subplots, you could do worse than using that show as a text book.  They usually have two intertwining B-stories that make good use of the ensemble.

Tonight I'll read some Dorothy Sayers and go to bed, though. (Although I am tempted to skip over to the second Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn story, The Withdrawing Room.  It doesn't have an audiobook version, unfortunately.)

See you in the funny papers.