Do Not Read This Title

The end is on sight!

It's right there... on the other side of the canyon.


You see, what's supposed to happen next is everyone runs off to rescue the guy who was kidnapped (who we'll call Tom, because that's his name). The rescue involved going to a cabin in the woods, finding Tom there and untying him. Which is a little dull, straight forward, bit of let down. All right, there is this confrontation with poor Jack afterwards, but he's not really much of a threat and it is a little after fact.

Not a problem though. We can have a confrontation between the kidnapper and the Agent who is one of the rescuers. This involves guns & posturing & lots of tension-type stuff. Good!

Except, why are we doing this?
Because it'll add some excitement.
But what is the story reason?
There'll guns and showing off and goods stuff.
There's no story reason. It's inconsistent characterisation. It takes the tension out of the next scene.
But it's good stuff.

I think I have a workable solution though (bring forward the confrontation with J) that might even involve some of the 'good stuff'. I just have to get the POV on it worked out. (THE kiss needs to be from Tom's POV, unfortunately most of the other action around it, can't be.)

I've been using filler (like X and Xxx and Xxxian) names while writing this draft.

The lost of Things I Need To Find Names For is getting a bit long.

1. Planet
2. Continent (same as 1)
3. Mine
4. Company that owns mine (could be same as 3)
5. Capital city
6. Large town
7. Small town
8. Another small town
9. Large house/estate on edge of 7
10. Another planet
11. Country on 10
12. Nationality of 11.
12. City in 11
13. Surname G-----------
14. Doctor's name
15. Counselling/psychiatric institution
16. Location of 15

I'm sure there's others I'll think of.

Whiteboard: the night version.

5 scenes to go.

Problem: scene as written doesn't feel right. Solution: go back and see how the characters want to play it.

Two down. Eight to go.

Interesting that doing this seems to help my focus when writing. I had been very frustrated with this novel. Sick of it really, although I did (do) want to finish it.

Frustrated with the supposed main character who won't act. Frustrated with the plot that wanted to meander. Frustrated with not being able to connect with it, in the way I had in the first draft.

This, at least, lets me see that I cam going somewhere and I am making progress.

"And I think I know how to make him show his hand."

That's good. Now would you care to share with me, seeing I'm the one who is going to be writing it?

So Agent Kyle has thought of something that he can do or say that will give away the midnight rider's identity. What would that be?

I'm still working on Fox obviously. It was a close thing. This morning I pulled out the first draft of Falcon, which was my Nanonovel from last year. The one I spent 10 days fighting to get words for and then wrote the remaining 27,000 words in *mumble*3*mumble* days. I read the first few paragraphs, and liked what I read. The writing sucked. It is put together with words scraped off the bottom of the writing pond. I knew it sucked. But the ideas, the characters, the situation, I like it. I kept reading. I read the whole bloody draft.

The main character in this, I have spent months trying to get him to shut up so I could concentrate on what I wanted to work on. I finally managed this about 10 days ago and what do I do? The one thing guaranteed to "get his attention" again. I do wish it was possible to hire the ingrates out to other writers.

So I'm letting the characters in WTSBIP (Work That Should Be In Progress) have their heads for now, to encourage them to do something interesting. Coming up with plans that I don't know about wasn't really what I had in mind though.

Pinched from buffysquirrel

I was just thinking yesterday I hadn't gone a meme thing in a while.

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven't gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven't gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

After some pondering, on what to count as a WIP, I went with both.

The Weaver was silent and for a moment Grace thought she'd gone again, then the barque grumbled. They're listening to us.

Only have 115 pages in current version of Fox, so it's page 23.

"It's nothing to do with us, and there are plenty of people to do something, if something is to be done."

Next scene doesn't yet exist and I'm not sure what happens. I know what the result has to. Our mystery rider gets shot, and the main character discovers who he is and has to protect him from the g/o/o/d/ bad guys.

I think it's too early for that.

Stakes aren't high enough. We don't care about him, or whether he's in danger yet. I think he needs to take more of a role in the story, which he does later. The agents need a better motive to start shooting at him too.

So I push this bit back and bring forward the murder bits.

This is going to have changes the ripple right through and means changes to everything, I know :\

119 words Christmas eve

260 words today.

More each time. Good.

Aaron has decided he wants to be Kyle. I'm not sure if he actually wants to be Kyle or he just wants to be non-Aaron. He seems to developing a personality though, so he can stay Kyle for now.