Wednesday, 13 April 2005

I got some writing done. It's hard to be sure of my progress--the story is all busted up and I haven't gotten it put back together yet. Each individual piece is (or was) in pretty good shape, but they don't go together into the story I'm working on.

The fact is, some of these pieces are pretty good, but that just makes it harder to make the necessary changes. I go into a scene thinking I'll put something in near the beginning, but the first paragraph flows into the second, which flows into the third, and pretty soon I've come to the end of the scene--which is a nice, crisp ending. I don't want to step on my nifty ending, so I start working my way back, looking for a place to slip in my change, without success. The bit I need to add doesn't just slip in. I have to dismantle the whole scene, changing almost all of it, before I can make the needed change.

Multiple that by six or seven scenes. There's a lot to do, even though probably 90% of the story is done.

I've got the story stucture worked out in my head, though. I had thought there were two major turning points, but there's just the one--so it needs to be later in the story. Then, the effects lead directly to the climax of the story. So, all the stuff that I thought came between the two turning points needs to be moved up to before the one turning point I'm left with, and the stuff that still comes after needs to be adjusted a bit and punched a lot.

The individual scenes are resisting, but it's just a matter of wrestling them into submission. I'm winning, I think. But what I have now--the busted up pieces that don't fit together--don't provide much evidence of it.