Life gets its way

I wound up missing some work last week. I was kind of tethered to the toilet, and having one about a block from my desk just didn’t work.

That does not mean I was any kind of productive at home. When you don’t feel well, sometimes it just requires dealing with the issue and nothing else.

The weekend wasn’t much better, because I had real-world tasks to deal with. I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for my water key. It’s time to turn on the sprinklers, but I cannot find my key. I’ll have to wait until payday and buy a new one. We can use hoses and sprinklers in the meantime.

Writing wasn’t great, but it comes to about 2200 words. It’s not awful, but it’s my sum-total for a week.

It’s all coming out in chunks right now and separated by section breaks. (***) I don’t particularly like it that way and need to put some thought into it.

Some of the section breaks are a great way to move the story ahead. When you have three per chapter, it could be an indication of a problem.

When this happens, it’s usually caused by a combination of things. I have characters who need to wrap up a few things. All the secrets are out with the exception of the last big one. Bringing that last big secret to the table requires some actions of each character and they aren’t all in the same place at the same time.

This is also made difficult with needing a reasonable amount of time to pass. Like a month or more. Something great is supposed to happen, but it takes time to learn that it might not be so great. My normal thing is to use a section break.

I could write this with complete flow, meaning to follow each character until they can deliver their discovery to the rest, but it would read like crap. My readers would have the information, but have to suffer along for a few thousand words before the characters could compare notes and draw conclusions. (I’m not doing this.)

I could do some telling. This is kind of anathema these days, but can work under some circumstances.

There are a few ideas in play. I’ll probably wrap this with a few section breaks, a tiny bit of telling, and by staying in the head of the character who has the most at stake.

Then there are the “rewards.” I still believe each character has to get something out of the ordeal. This isn’t like dragon treasure or anything like that. Maybe Cody and Bai start making a life together. Maybe Jenny gains some of the experience she needs along her path to investigative journalism. I can weave some of this into the other pieces to make it flow better. I promise not to write a scene where Princess Leah hands out medals to signify all is well.

Do any of you ever have problems like this? How did you address them? Do you know where my friggin water key is?

The bachelor part of this weekend is over

I have a Sunday routine. I insist on speaking with my parents every Sunday. We live in different states now, so Sunday dinners are out. It usually takes about an hour. Then my wife called to let me know she was heading for home.

I grabbed my iPad and keyboard and set up to write. My daughter showed up and we talked. It never really was an official bachelor weekend, because she canceled her weekend plans. She decided to drive to Cascade for the day. This was my chance. Everyone was out, and my wife wouldn’t get here for about four hours. It was about 11:30 AM.

I managed to raise my word count to 3653. That makes about 2000 for the day. I find my brain telling me to stop after a while and ended it here. I left The Playground mid scene with a meth tweaker taped to a chair and a thug throwing slobbery dog water in his face to bring him around. My thug needed time to find his pliers anyway. Those nice gold crowns aren’t going to extract themselves.

I may get a few more words tomorrow, or I may edit my other story. With family home again, they have some say over Monday too. Tomorrow is my rotating day off, so I have a chance.

I’m pretty happy with what I have down so far. I set the stage for the villain, introduced the victim, and am working on the anti hero. If I’m lucky, I may even get to the hero. I have some cool things in store for her and can’t wait.

It’s all a bit passive, and telling right now. I like it, but the experts probably wouldn’t. I really want to cover a lot of ground and get all the pieces moving. I can do that faster with a bit of telling.

This tale is a challenge, because I’m telling three different stories. The victim doesn’t need a character arch, just increasing danger. The other two have to change and grow during the story.

I need to read it all with fresh eyes in the morning and see if I can reduce the passive portions. Some of it has to stay. I refuse to change things like “it was snowing.” I know I should say “snow fell gently over the freshly plowed streets.” I just can’t bring myself to use eight words where three will do.

I promise to spend the extra words pulling out the tweaker’s teeth.

What would you do? Is it better to spend the words and never tell, or do you want to get to the important stuff?