Day 39 - Starting a New Surge

I didn't write that much today, but that's partly because I was busy pulling together the rest of In Flight.  The ending has finally gelled in place.

I mentioned yesterday something about how I needed to shake up the middle -- well today I sat down to figure out where I was going with that, and discovered that I didn't need to change anything.  I just needed to intensify some things.  Well I did need to move one major emotional lynch pin.

Just a point of writing craft and theory: Often you don't want to pile up your emotional lynch pins, dramatic moments and turns of plot. The solution to many a problem is to spread them out and give them each their due.  However....

Sometimes spreading out important turns and events actually creates a stalling point.  I have a sequence that shakes my heroine up pretty badly, and I had planned to get her through that, and then smack her with a big awful moment -- which would serve as the catalyst into the ending.  The main problem is that this hard emotional moment then feels like it needs more... attention. There needs to be an adjustment period.  Give the emotion it's due, even if that recovery moment really slows things down.  I mean, it comes off either feeling glossed over or gratuitous. Hard to find the balance.

Until I realized, wait, I need to hit the heroine while she's down in the previous sequence.  She's supposed to be lower than she's ever been before.  Wouldn't it be emotionally right to put her down and flatten her just once?  Let it be her total low point.  She then has one recovery, and she comes out of that already catalyzed at the right point in time.  (Which is also good because the others can be caught flat-footed by her dive into the climax.)


Today's Progress: 1236 words on In Flight.

Mostly writing the heroines literal plunge into the climax of the story.  Also a nice moment between hero and heroine.


Eating, Watching, Reading.

Uh, crackers and peanut butter, and also nachos. Continuing to read Murder Must Advertize and Murder and Blueberry Pie.  Watching?  Oh, I did watch something today: the most recent Simon's Cat (which is about a month old).

If you haven't seen Simon's Cat (the saga of a long-suffering cartoonist and his cat) you've got to see it. This episode is about what it's like in my household all the time.  (Although as often as not, it's the frail, elderly, deaf lady who is committing this act of performance art around here.):



See you in the funny papers.