Have been jumping around forcing myself to write the actual story parts of the book. It's tough going because my mind doesn't want to stay with this type of work and I keep suddenly getting up and going to do something else.*

This has made me realize that I've gotten to a point where I need to work out a good map for the story world. I've been sticking to vague general layouts in my head, but I need to pull them together on paper and get them nailed down--including distances and direction--because I can't get this thing grounded properly until I do. I also need to get specific sites in my head for some of these scenes I'm adding, for the same reason: proper grounding.

Today I made myself start filling out the big conversation between the MC and the main secondary character, the one that's the "reveal" for the book. As I did so, I had to go back to side documents where I'd moved freewriting and background work, and had to copy and paste bits over into the main document. As I did that, I admitted to myself that the reveal seems stupid and gimmicky and hokey, and I noticed that the side pieces give the "reveal" heft (in my mind, anyway) that makes it not seem quite so stupid.

I also see no way to work those side pieces into the ms** without doing what's been in the back of my mind all along, which is suddenly cutting, after 20 or whatever chapters, to another POV character. And not only that, but doing it in second person.***

I have avoided committing to anything about this part of the book because it's an extremely terrible idea to suddenly snap into another POV and voice, especially so late, after the reader's quite firmly entrenched in the MC's POV and voice. And it's most especially a terrible idea to do it using second person, which requires an even greater leap from the reader--a leap which quite a few readers are never able to make. But this growing feeling that my crucial plot information is stupid and hokey has driven me to go ahead and let this one breakout chapter go the way it wants to go, against all sane self-advice. If nothing else, it'll eventually help me see what absolutely has to be there, that might be worked in in other ways. And maybe if the book gets published I can put the chapter online, if it's totally messing up the book's flow.



*On the bright side, my teeth have never been so well flossed.

**Because there's no way my characters would discuss all this in any depth, much less the depth that would make the reveal seem less gimicky.

***The reason it's in second person is because that's the way it came out and that's the way it wants to be. Later, another option might be to try putting into first person and letting it be an extended monologue disguised as dialogue. However, it has resisted going this direction so far--hence, the side document storage rather than placement in the full ms.

Tightened up Chapter 11 a little. Seems like it's working so far, but we'll see. I'm trying to squeeze in little informational bits of dialog without losing tension or the characters' various emotional connections to the scene. I won't know till later, when I'm reading through to check flow, whether it seems natural or like one big honking red-alert author-intrusive data dump after another.

Yesterday I wrote a new piece of dialog where a secondary character spoke up on her own and made the exchange come to life.

Today I realized the ending of that dialog went off track because my MC would be too worried to respond as lightly as he does. So I started to redo the end of the dialog, but blanked out because a) I'm tired, and b) I need a stronger understanding of the scenes that happen right before it in order to have a grip on exactly how worried he is.

So instead of doing that, I wrote a couple paragraphs describing a pair of pants.

Hmm, so I'm thinking that every writer may have a different base "layer" that they tend to start with when writing a scene. Some people tend to need a plot to build from, some need a setting; I generally just need characters or even just a strong feeling from a character I don't know yet. If I think about it, I see that I most often start with a base layer of either internal thought or of dialog. Then I flesh out and layer on physical grounding, setting, and last of all, plot. (not all the time, but more than other ways of working.)*

So it occurs to me that this may be something to consider, when I get to a "stuck" place. Maybe mixing it up a little and starting with different layers than I'm used to can help when I get in a writing rut. Like, say, if something's not coming easily, maybe I could back off and approach it from establishing setting first, or getting a physical bead on where everybody is and what they're doing. Or maybe I could start with an action.

I mean, I do do all these things, but maybe I could do it more deliberately sometimes to see what happens--to see if it gets the story moving and helps me reconnect. Something to think about, anyway.



*When I work, the thematic stuff may already be close to the surface in that initial layer of internal thought and non-plot-driven dialog, just because internal thought and non-plot-driven dialog are already halfway tapped into the character's growth and change. Something to think about is whether plot-driven writers tend to have to work harder to get to that layer of thematic depth and resonance than someone who starts closer to character. Is the thematic engine of a story as visibly close to the surface, if your mind works first in terms of "what's happening"? Is it harder not to lose track of? Maybe not; maybe I just have trouble recognizing theme in plot because of my own writing weaknesses.

Yesterday was very productive. I found myself settling in to work on the area around chapters 9 and 10, moving pieces of them around and getting them to read like, well, part of a real book that you pull off the shelf. I took out stuff that was slowing or distracting, and stuck it somewhere else to deal with later. Also brought in dialog from elsewhere that now belonged here. The interesting thing was that I finally was able to get more deeply into these dialogs, with everyone participating and driving the story in interesting ways (including to the next story problem). This was a big change from the way these particular dialogs have been up till now; mostly they've been me writing about people exchanging information or my MC saying what he thought about everything while everybody else sank into the background.

So I'm wondering if I sometimes have to hit a certain point with a scene--get it into the right place in story and flowing with the story--before my writing brain can start to take on the task of six people sitting in the same room talking, each bringing their own different personalities and backgrounds and motivations into the equation.

Maybe it's a case of layering, similar to what I learned when I was working on that w-f-h novel and its fight scenes (the ones that nearly did me in). Maybe sometimes you have to get a scene in place to a certain degree--maybe sometimes it needs to have its place and purpose in the story flow--before other layers can start to develop naturally and cooperatively.

If that's true, I suspect the "sometimes" may have to do with how complicated the scene is. Fight scenes are complicated to write, and so are scenes with more than 3 characters. But in non-fight scenes with 1-3 characters, I've used dialogs to figure out the place and purpose of the scene in the first place.

I need to think about this some more. I'm not sure of all the variables involved. All I know is that I wasn't able to "get to" 4 or so of the characters in this scene until I got it hooked into the story in the right place and time.

The question is: Why now? What's different that enabled me to do this now? Is it just because I have a better grip on the story in general? Or is there something I can learn from this to help me avoid future dead ends and detours?

Was thinking out a certain portion of the backstory of my MC as I was driving around doing errands this morning. I already knew the very basic idea of what happened, but I was working it out in my mind, following the events step by step to see how they came about reasonably and believably in the world of the book. I was doing this because if I ignore or distort the reality of my characters and their world to make something happen, it can mess up the whole ms. Even if what I'm ignoring or distorting happens offstage, before the book even begins, it can still mess it up.

So I was thinking about this piece of backstory, and as I followed it through logically, popping around to check with the different characters involved in it to make sure they were behaving reasonably, I saw that this three-year-old (in story time) event is still very immediate and raw for the MC, and drives him even more than I thought it did.

To me, that says it needs to come into the story somehow. When I just knew the basic idea of this backstory, I covered it in a paragraph or two of narration stuck into the middle of something else. Now I think maybe it needs to come out in this Saharan section as dialog between the MC and the main secondary character, with paragraphs of internal thought by the MC where he adds painful details and thoughts that he wouldn't say out loud. I think this might also lead the secondary character to reveal something of himself, and that the MC is likely to get mad at him.

I looked at an article on flashback-writing, and one of the tips was to always place a flashback after a strong scene. Of course I can immediately think of ten million reasons and situations* where it would be the kiss of death to put a flashback right after a strong scene, but aside from that, it's an interesting idea and something to keep in mind.

I need to approach this backstory/flashback issue very mindfully, or it will get the better of me. I also need to remember: this isn't just about the emotional story; I can use these suckers to pull the reader along by dropping hints but not explaining something till I'm good and ready.

So maybe, in deciding how to handle each piece of backstory/flashback, some things to consider would be:

• It is just something the reader needs to know in order not to be confused?
• Does it inform and deepen the story?
• Does it establish an important emotional point for the reader?
• Can it provoke conflict, if divulged in dialog, in scene?
• Will hearing about it drive other characters to act, react, or change?
• Is there something about it that the main character isn't ready to face till later in the book?

I'm still not satisfied with the pacing of the beginning of Night Road, so that always looms at the back of my mind: You never figured out how to fix this. You fell short. You were unable to solve this writing problem. This dystopian--and probably the swordfighting ms, too--bring the exact same situation around again and drop it at my feet. It's like I'm not allowed to pass over the writing bridge till I can answer a certain question correctly. Only my question isn't "What's the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow," it's "How do you pace and structure a ms with necessarily heavy doses of world-building and backstory?"



*okay, maybe not that many.

Note to self: entering the Sahara

Last night I sat down with a spiral and did some thinking. It was flat-out alarming. I quickly saw that I've set myself up: I now face an overwhelming mass of doled-out storyline setups and of motivation-establishing points that need to be made in scene. Most of these would read okay in a regular book, but not coming right after 150 pages of my characters hovering on the brink of death and destruction.

In other words, I'm in trouble. Big trouble. I've got a ms that's going to have a huge reader-killing, book-killing dead spot. Proportionally speaking, this dead spot equals the amount of Africa taken up by the Sahara desert. And if I actually write out every bloody scene that's needed to make this story work, it'll be like sand expanding to fill most of the African continent.

It was discouraging to look at my notes and realize that.

However, discouragement is like a kiwifruit, or Starbucks: I don't have to pay attention to it if I don't feel like it. And I don't feel like it. My writing time is so limited, it makes me sick to think of pouring any down the discouragement drain.

So. I've started breaking down the task at hand, and I think the thing to do now is stay flexible while moving forward under this general plan:

• Start writing out some of the scenes/dialogs that establish what I want established.

• Do side work from secondary characters' POV regularly, as a guideline. Because if I lose touch with those secondary characters, I am screwed.
  

• If a scene/exchange is recalcitrant, don't force it, drop it.

• Watch for anything that can be satisfactorily conveyed through summary/narration.

• Remember those big backstory dumps from the first half. They established information and emotion. It may be possible to peel the full meaning from some of them and make them more bare-bones. If so, their full, layered meanings can come to light here in the Sahara Zone, via exchanges with the new character whose story now must unfold. If the true heft of a backstory revelation happens here, it should also provoke tension and conflict-raising actions/decisions by the MC.
  

(Which overlaps with:)

• Keep a feeler out for scenes that can naturally double up. (Ex. dialog establishes one point while, via "background" matter like dialog tags and scene-grounding, another point slowly rises. As soon as the dialog has made its point, it ends and the "background" becomes the new focus and is dealt with. Or vice versa: in-scene action makes its point to the reader, and the second that point gets made someone starts talking to the MC re. another point.)

Things to keep in the back of my mind:

• The unused, already-established hook-y scenes that are going to help carry this part.
• The emotions that drive my MC. Especially the ones he is unaware of.
• The end confrontation I'm heading for.
• And always--always--the POVs of the secondary characters. Always.
  

Been thinking about the last section, the one that doesn't match the rest in format or tone. Right now it's mostly in dialog because it's still in raw form from when the ms was a GN. These last scenes tend to be long flowing stretches of conversation, whereas the rest of the book is made up of concise bits with one main idea per page. I always figured I'd eventually divide the last section into smaller ideas to make it match the rest of the ms.

But the other day when I was going over it, there was this one particularly long stretch of dialog, maybe a page and a half or two pages of just talking, no tags or anything, and I thought, there's no way to cut this up because it's all one idea. Then I thought, maybe that means I should delete it completely, just get rid of it. It doesn't fit, it doesn't belong.

But now I'm rethinking. Maybe the long dialog stretch wants to be that way (long and flowing). Every time I rewrite it, it stays like that. Every time, I forget that it's not supposed to be like that and get lost in what I'm doing. This also happens with other dialogs in this last section--in fact, with most of the scenes with Paris/Alexandros and Helen. I haven't had this problem with any of the other sections of the book--not even the Menelaus section that also started out as GN. The Menelaus section went easily into the cut-up concise form. And I'm drawn to the thought of writing these last dialog pieces out as fully fleshed scenes.

Would it really be so bad if that part of the story starts looking more like a normal book? Doesn't that parallel what's actually going on in the story? That's what I'm thinking now. My gut is urging me toward it. I know the thought of writing that way feels like a relief. It'll be a relief to not have to be so constricted and careful and mindful and tight. That's how the MC feels, too at that point in the story--her state of mind matches the format. And now I'm wondering if the reader would feel relieved, too. It might feel good to suddenly be able to read a normal page with normal margins and ideas that slop over onto the next page.

It's not that simple, though. Right now the last section has only scenes with Paris/Alexandros and Helen--but other kinds of scenes still have to be written. I've got to finish up several threads that center on other characters. I know those won't feel right in regular prose. I can't even think about them that way.

So...today's thought, while walking Tyson...what if only the scenes with Helen and P/A are regular scenes, while other threads remain tight and constricted? Will that be too disruptive to the reader? Will have to think some more.

Today I skipped over the middle and started shaping up the later middle (Menelaus) and end (Paris). I've been avoiding the Paris part till now because I know it's not anything like the rest of the book in tone. It's the only part that was written entirely in graphic novel form, and it shows, being nearly all dialog and coming off as glib, and also as more of a character study of Paris than anything. So, will have to start thinking about how to bring the questions that drive the ms into that section, and how to make it about Helen, and how and when to bring something besides dialog into it. I can already tell that I'm going to have a tendency to get all didactic and start telling the reader what to understand and what to feel, so I'll have to remember that when I get that way, it's pre-writing and not the real thing.

Had some trouble today because I tried to work on a chapter that's got a lot of dialog where people exchange information and come to decisions about what to do. I find this so stinkin' boring that I have difficulty making myself do it. I can't stay focused, I have trouble sitting still. I think I'm not going to push myself about it for the rest of today or tomorrow, but try to skip to something else that seems more interesting.

In fact, for the rest of today I might just scribble some notes to see if I can find something I'd enjoy working on tomorrow. I see a little part that might fit the bill, maybe. Must think about it.

It's weird, because in the part I was supposedly working on today, I couldn't even figure out where to start the scene or where it was happening or what needed to be real-time and what needed to be quick narrative overview. But I can look at this little wee bit that seems like it could be fun, and just glancing at it, I already know where it starts, where the characters are, how they're feeling, how they're going to treat each other, and how it ties into the scene that will come after.

Here's what I hope. I hope I've got enough writing chops to be able to pull together a scene that doesn't interest me but that needs to be there for story. I hope I have enough craft under my belt to be able to make it readable, clear, and interesting so that nobody can tell it was like pulling teeth for me to write it.

Tomorrow maybe I should think about why today's scene/chapter seemed so effing dull that I couldn't settle into it, and why this other wee bit might not be--what's different about them, and is there any way to make boring parts less boring for me? Because from where I sit right now it looks like they both have dialog with people exchanging information and coming to decisions.

Got a bit of actual work done, and now am looking at organizing some thoughts on Chapter 4. Not because I think I'll actually remember any of the organizing or the thoughts, but if I think it through once, I'll probably absorb at least a piece of it and it'll come back out later, as if I thought of it all on my own out of the blue.

But one thing that confuses me is what constitutes action. I think of action as being actual action, like jumping out of a helicopter or walking up a hill--going somewhere or doing something. But if you have people finding something out that they didn't know before, that furthers the story or creates conflict, is that action? It's not emotional development. What is it? I have a writer friend who insists that dialog is action, but I have thus far not been able to convince myself of it. I consistently have too many, or overly lengthy, talking-head scenes and have to fix them because it's boring. Therefore, I figure, dialog can't be action. Plus, if dialog was action, wouldn't My Dinner With Andre be an action flick? I dunno.

Maybe dialog is action in a very large sense, like if you outline the whole story you can say something like "Chapter 27--While cheating Winston in a poker game, Alice learns that he is actually her long-lost twin." The action, to me, is that they're playing poker. It's what they're doing. But maybe in the larger picture, the action is Alice learning that Winston is her twin brother. It's what moves the plot forward. Whereas the emotional story would be how that affects Alice and Winston, and the cheating develops character and reveals it to the reader.

But there's another thing. Sometimes the character learns something in a scene. Sometimes the reader learns something. Sometimes each learns something different. Sometimes multiple characters are learning different things at the same time. So which one is the action?

I am massively confused. I was trying to break down Chapter 4, but realized that there are multiple things going on (three characters are in this chapter; at least three that matter). Then I thought I could divide it up by character and by action/emotion and just sit and look at it for a while, feeling that I'd accomplished something--but my head is too muddled.

Okay, maybe I will just look at the emotional side of this chapter, divided by character. That's three things to consider, and I understand emotional arcs. And I think I found earlier in the ms that understanding the emotions in a scene helps plot it--but I'm not sure, because I'm muddled and confused and can't even remember what my own name is, at the moment.

G*d, I sound senile.

The ending section I have for the former GN is all fluff. It's fun fluff, but I'll need to tie it to the front part better. Maybe one thing to do is keep track of issues raised (i.e. stumbling blocks thrown in the MC's path) in the front part, and try to show them being relieved them one by one at the end? Not sure. Somehow I want the reader to be rooting for the MC to make a choice that maybe isn't the wisest course, and in retrospect will turn out to be a very bad idea with dire and far-reaching consequences. Somehow I need to get past all that and make the reader want her to make that choice.

The formatting I have (at the moment) for the main story:

paragraph breaks rather than indents
text of each page centered top-to-bottom
border around the text
as the story progresses toward the last chapter, margins get wider, text gets less space, borders get tighter--all still centered

Formatting for the out-of-POV clips:

same, but no borders and the margins are always standard.

And at the moment the title is Boundaries. Don't know if this will hold up; none of the other title ideas have. But it's working for me at the moment, and so is the formatting, although I know I probably can't submit a ms that looks like this. However, if the clips end up remaining in the ms then the formatting may have to stand till an editor sees it, because so far I can't think of a better way to show the differences between the clips and the main story. Right now I feel that changing fonts is not strong enough. I know it's best to standardize the format and let the words speak for themselves, but that's not enough here. Here, the form helps tell the story.

Of course, there's always the worry that I'm just being Russell Crowe in that shed in the backyard in A Beautiful Mind--that my ms will end up being only the sad and strange evidence of a disordered mind. And I know from Beating Heart that a lot of people don't get formatting that's tied to story.

Nevertheless, I press on. Now that I think about it, I need to go through the entire back half of the ms and reconsider each scene. That part was all written as a GN, so of course it comes off as a little glib now, when all that's left is dialog. The front part was conceived as prose-ish, so it's more...I dunno what to call it. The ideas are more concise, concrete, and separate, whereas the later ms flows from scene to scene and you can't tell them apart without pictures. I need to fix the later ms so it's a series of punches, and I can get my mind around each individual punch.

So, where to start? At the moment, I am clueless. First order of the day: get a clue.

I've hit a slight snag, but a good one. I started trying to expand and flesh out some in-between parts that aren't on paper currently, but that are needed for transition. The gaps they need to fill are big enough that what I fill them with will probably end up being important for itself. These gap-fillers will be about characters and events that come up again much later in the ms, so I need to set them up anyway.

So I started looking at one particular bare-bones piece of dialogue I have--or rather, I had two bare-bones pieces of dialogue and pulled them together and started trying to figure out how to play them and what slant to give them and what the story needs to cover and emphasize right now.

But then I went off on a tangent and took this image/piece of info from my head that I had been planning to use much later, and I stuck it in here. I like it here. It ups the tension and starts darkening the story, but we don't know why yet, or what it means.

My snag is that I don't know exactly where to put it, for pacing. I'm looking at the first 50 or so pages, and it needs to be in the exact right place. It could be carved down to a paragraph or two of narration and stuck in somewhere around page 30-35 as a nice thought-provoking hint. Or it could be part of a larger conversation around page 45-50. I had the thought that page 45-50 is too darn late to use something that could be so strong to draw the reader on. But then I look at how fast this reads, with the pages so short--the reader would be to page 50 within 15 minutes probably, or maybe less. I don't know. I realized I don't have a feel for how the pacing is right now. I don't know if it's sagging anyplace in that first 50 pages or not. And I don't know where this piece needs to go. So I can't really work on it, because I don't know if it's in its own scene with dialogue, or if it's a passing point in an earlier scene.

So here I sit. And I think I'm going to set this aside for now and go to the Y.

I wonder if I should try to print out and read it later tonight, or just not work on it anymore at all today. I really don't know what to do. Perhaps it will come to me at the Y.

Very antsy, having trouble settling in to write. Something doesn't feel right. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Let me think.

I think maybe it's that the part coming up is a long in-scene section that doesn't fit the style and tone of what's come before. It's all dialog-y and spread out--really, it's very normal prose, and maybe that's what's bothering me. So maybe what I need to do is think in snapshots rather than focusing on the flow of conversation? I often start scenes with this kind of bare-bones dialog and build up from there to a fully fleshed-out true scene. Maybe this time I need to go at it with a different mindset and build it in a different way, with a different goal in mind. Hmm. Not sure.

So...snapshots. Maybe I can look at what the characters are saying--and what I want to say--and tease out the main points and break them up and see if I can get one point per page.

At this rate, the book is going to be a thousand pages long.

I missed a day of Pepys, and when I went to catch up, there was this:

"...another neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out."

This is in Pepys' usual mix of matter-of-fact commentary about how his day went. The "also dead" refers to a previous item about a neighbor dead of plague.

I wonder if Mr. Hollworthy got thrown while he was out alone, and later somebody found him dangling gruesomely. And now that very able man's entire life is one gruesome remark in the diary of somebody who's been dead for three hundred years.

But you know, that's more than most people get.

Anyhoo, off to write.

Decent writing day, amidst other stuff that had to be done.

Talked to a writer friend on the phone. WF had a good idea re. swordfighting ms. Specifically, since it's in third person, why not put a short teaser at the very beginning, from an unknown person's pov? Let us know somebody is watching the hero, but we don't know who. Periodically put little bits like this between chapters, where they seem to fit. Voila!--instant tension and raised stakes. It also lets us know up front there's a villain, where otherwise you wouldn't know till well into the book.

I noticed I had a bear of a time trying to explain the story line to WF. It's so confusing to me, I can't even describe it over the phone. Not good.

I worked on the used-to-be-GN. Did one of the, er, raw scenes, one of those that are going to get me in trouble and prevent this from selling. Also started developing other bits that seemed quick and simple, but when I got started, I realized they're threads that go all the way through the book. This really is a novel, even though it's not going to read like one.

Also thought about formatting. At the moment I'm going with no indentations and an extra space between paragraphs. Then when the first thing happens to limit the MC, the margins shift in. I don't know how this will work as I progress and her world gets smaller and tighter, but it's a good place to start.

I don't have the dialog form down yet, though. I don't like what I have, and don't even stick to it as I write. Will have to see what happens with that.

Back from trip. Caught up on laundry. Dogs home and bathed. Groceries shopped for; we have food.

I'm going to set the swordfighting ms aside and piddle around with my GN to un-GN it. I have to job hunt right now anyway, and that is not conducive to concentrating on the flow of a regular novel--the plotlines, character arcs, scene-setting, and transitions. However, it is conducive to playing with the bits and pieces of a GN-becoming-something-else.

Right now I'm going to work with each page being one separate idea. I want to play with the shape of the words on the page--or maybe it's just the margins I'm talking about; the character gets more and more boxed in as the story progresses. I'm not sure how the beginning should be, though. Also have no clue what to do with dialog. I'm thinking the myth stories will be just regular prose.

Maybe I need to think of the white space as a character, or as a mood. As oppression, maybe? And the words (or the space they take up on the page) represent my MC?

I have chapter headings somewhere; must pull them out and try to organize my thinking. One idea per page, but the chapter headings split the book into bigger ideas. I like the thought of a chapter heading on one page, stark in the middle all alone (no numbers, no "chapter," just the title of the section). I like the way that makes a reader quickly regroup; for some reason (IMO) it enables the reader to shift gears in an instant. It's sort of like a palate cleanser; you don't even have to think because the page preps you for the next course.

Pulled up my WIP this morning and sat staring at it with no clue how to begin. So I tried to put it off by calling a writer friend to see how wf's WIP is coming along. Instead we ended up talking about my WIP while I sputtered around trying to explain why I don't know where to begin with this chapter--about all the things this chapter could and should do and show and set up. Of course I don't understand what it's supposed to set up, exactly, but I know there are lots of things.

We tossed that around a bit and wf got me to narrow down some issues and pinpoint a couple, and then it was down to mainly one, which is Character 4 and the fact that I don't "get" him yet. I described him (personality, not looks) to wf and gave some examples of people we know who are like that, sort of, and how I know what he feels because I strongly feel that way about some aspects of writing. Wf suggested that the clothing of the people we know like that sometimes shows their personality. We talked about how Character 4's personality traits might come out in what he wears. I was like, okay, he's poor and does hands-on labor, so he has one or two sets of clothes at most and they're hardly ever washed, probably patched. And he's not vain at all, but there would likely be one outward indication of this huge inner dramatic streak he has. I thought it would probably--logically--be his hat. Once I got started thinking about one specific thing (under the direction of wf) I could feel this guy getting a little stronger and moving away from the shadow of the other three characters and all the plot stuff that's fogging my brain. So I got off the phone and started working.

Specifically, Character 4 doesn't have any money, and everything he owns is worn and faded, and his hat would probably be shapeless and utile. I'm thinking it would be felt, not straw, and it's likely red, but like I said, very faded now. But...I'll bet he'd wear with a little dramatic flair, either put something in the brim, or flourish it every once in a while with a dramatic gesture, or change the angle or roll up the brim.

For some reason, this made his words fall more into place and the other characters' words recede a little, and I saw all the crap I had to cut that was me blah-blah-blahing in dialog. I didn't delete it, but cut and saved it under a separate file in case I need it again later. Now the chapter has a backbone to work with.

Thank goodness for writer friends. Worth their weight in M&Ms.

I'm trying to sculpt this chapter of mostly dialog into reasonable first-draft shape. Right now there's twelve messy pages of it (double spaced)--twelve pages of patches of dialog on many different subjects with no transitions or scene-setting between them.

There's a fine line between self-indulgent twaddle and sharp, crisp, interesting dialog. Also I don't want to stray too far into dull bare-bones move-the-story-forward, as opposed to sparking things up with character development. But if things get sparked too much, it's like, wtf are these people talking about? It becomes completely removed from the situation they're in. Sort of like a Quentin Tarantino movie, heh.

The thing about Quentin Tarantino movies is that all the characters tend to talk like Quentin Tarantino. At least in the ones I've seen. But...he keeps the story sharp and interesting, even though sometimes he's stopping everything dead in its tracks while the people talk like him. So why is the story sharp and interesting? Maybe because his stories take such wild turns, you really have no clue what he's going to do next. And maybe he takes care and doesn't let the dialog go on too long? I don't know.

I was thinking about The DaVinci Code. I read it once, then gave my copy away, which was stupid because it was a nice copy, hardback with color pictures of the all the places and items mentioned in the book. I thought I'd never read it again. But now I'm thinking about how the author kept things moving--because he certainly did keep things moving. There was zero character development, as I recall, but for some reason that wasn't important as I was reading. I'd like to take another look at it. I wonder if I can borrow it back from the person I gave it to. Except she's off at college 300 miles away. But if I go to the library I'll end up with a bunch of books I don't have time to read, and then I'll end up reading them instead of writing. And if I go to Half-Price I'll end up buying a bunch of books I can't afford and don't have time to read. I have zero willpower when it comes to books. G*d forbid I should go to the regular bookstore, of course. I only have books one and two of Saiyuki Reload, and the others are calling my name.

Anyway, I don't know how to sort out these twelve pages. I guess the thing to do first is look to see which bits can be used to raise the stakes. Move it all around like puzzle pieces to see if any fall together. And save everything because I might end up using it.