Walking with Tyson today, I was thinking about the idea of bridle and spur and how that might shape the ms. Bridle and spur means several things here, one being the MC is all raw spur and his best friend is all controlled bridle. I was thinking, how does that apply to the story at hand, the old parts that I've got to redo? I was thinking about the end, because there's a lot of stuff crammed into the final scenes, so many things happening one after that other I couldn't ever really figure out what was important about the end. So while Tyson thought about who had left that interesting scent and should he pee over it, I thought: What does my character do at the end that he couldn't have done at the beginning of the story? Well, that was pretty clear right away: he gives up his sword. And why is he able to? I didn't know before (or rather, I didn't know the thematic/character arc reason), but now I do: he's able to apply his own bridle. Reason lies between bridle and spur.

And if you're wondering, Tyson's answers were "another dog" and "yes, I should."

Anyway, I think the thing to do today is try to finish trimming Chapter 4 to something just roughly workable (right now it's pages and pages of unrelated pieces), because I feel pretty sure I'll have to come back and shape it later anyway, after I've worked my way deeper into the story and have a stronger feel for what I need to emphasize re. character. I think perhaps there will be a lot of boring housekeeping-type writing to do in this go-round. Because there is a story, there will necessarily be times when I must go from Point A to Point B. I need to try not to panic and get upset, as long as it doesn't go on too long and start to head off track. I hope that now I can stick to the proper road and not stray off into a fog, although, knowing me, that seems unlikely, doesn't it?

I also decided that I do need to kill somebody here in Chapter 5, because otherwise some of the characters' decisions won't be sympathetic. I think maybe a randomly anonymous person, for now, because it's not really that I have to murder someone in plain sight--I just need a dead body, basically.

It's sad if I think about the fact that my previous completed version of the ms was basically a 100,000 word outline--and not a very good one, because a third of it was missing and the rest had about 99,950 words too many--but what can you do? Shake the dust off your feet and move on, that's all.