I didn't do a very good job of forcing myself to stay on that problem spot yesterday, but today I bore down and got through most of it. That's not to say it works. Just like I thought, it makes the emotional story veer off on a tangent, and I don't know how to bring it back. But anyway, I got the basics of the first problem part down. The thing is, I know this is going to happen two more times--I'll insert a specific tragic event that has to go in there, and it'll shift the story away from its true emphasis. So I'll have to pay close attention to any fix I figure out, because the story's going to need to be patched up at least twice more.

I don't like to use the word "theme," but that's what this is. The story has always had one basic main idea I want to explore. But these scenes of personal loss are so strong (in theory, anyway; I don't know how they actually read right now) that they sweep away everything in their path. However, they're not the kind of events you can deal with offstage or offhandedly, either; they are a big deal. Ugh.

The only fix I can think of right now is to show the passage of time before and after each event, to kind of tamp things down and bring everything back to normal. I don't know if that's enough, though. I'm afraid it's not--I have a very uncomfortable feeling that it's not--but we'll see.