Plot bombs I’ve explained before–inspiration that explodes in the plot and drives it forward into new and fascinating territory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What I’ve had this week isn’t a plot bomb.\u00a0 It’s more like that rib-spreader thing that surgeons use when they want to mess around inside someone’s chest cavity.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This week’s inspiration–if you can call it that–shoved itself into too small a space in the plot and then pushed it open.<\/p>\n
My brain is still sore from that operation.\u00a0\u00a0 I have pointed out to Book IV repeatedly that we do not need more stuff in less space…we need to move things briskly on, joggety-jog or even gallopy-gallopy,\u00a0 to get to Book V, leaving enough space in Book V to do what must be done there.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Plot Daemon shoved a whole new problem in between things already snugly packed, and said “Move ’em over.”\u00a0 Over where<\/em>, I want to ask PD, but PD has already gone back down into the engine room and slammed the door,\u00a0 and banging on it will do no good.\u00a0\u00a0 There is<\/em> no where<\/em>, she says, looking at the wordage so far and the big “STOP HERE” sign at the end of the road beyond which editorial fiat will start chopping with a free hand.<\/p>\n Talked a bit over with a friend last night, to see if maybe (whimper) a chapter already written should be tossed in favor of the new stuff, and he said no, use both.<\/p>\n The past 2-3 weeks have now produced two intrusive plot chunks…ah, there’s a better metaphor…think of intrusions of magma along the margins of formations, either forcing the other rock aside or melting it and thus changing it from sedimentary to metamorphic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These don’t feel “hot” enough to make that seamless melt-to-metamorphic quality–it’s more like a barely-hot intrusion that’s just breaking what was already there and seemed sound.<\/p>\n Sigh.\u00a0 I could’ve used some nice bright normal<\/em> plot-bombs…or just straight story-stuff flowing smoothly out of my head and into the file.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plot bombs I’ve explained before–inspiration that explodes in the plot and drives it forward into new and fascinating territory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What I’ve had this week isn’t a plot bomb.\u00a0 It’s more like that rib-spreader thing that surgeons use when they want to mess around inside someone’s chest cavity.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This week’s inspiration–if you can call it that–shoved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1238,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}