I have been struggling for some time with a lesser bad guy who is one of those characters you wish would make better choices–and you give him chances to make them–but he (or she, as in Barranyi in the DEED) just will not do it.\u00a0 Barra’s reasons were mostly pride, arrogance, resentment…she was furious that Paks had a chance to be a paladin and the gods didn’t choose *her*.\u00a0 Basically, Cain’s dilemma…how come Abel’s sacrifice was accepted?\u00a0\u00a0 This one has very different motivations.They include religion, a genuine sense of responsibility for certain others, and fear of retribution from those who recruited him and have the power to hurt those he wants to protect.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This means that certain actions which he feels he must perform to accomplish his primary positive goals (and his negative ones as well) are psychologically painful–and he tries to do them in the least painful way.\u00a0\u00a0 He is a roiling mass of contradictions inside.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some readers are going to be very upset with me about him, I’ll bet.<\/p>\n
But today, the crisis came,\u00a0 and I finally got a very difficult scene written.\u00a0 First draft only, but actually down in saved zeros & ones.\u00a0 No hard copy yet (I need to install a new printer.\u00a0 That always takes a struggle when things weren’t purchased as a mated set. )\u00a0 The draft is not a lot longer yet, since I’ve been fighting this part of it since I got home from Winnipeg, complicated by the storms and periodic power glitches due to the storms.\u00a0\u00a0 For those who may find the long struggle to survive fairly dull (it’s all about doing the next thing), this is not the only open conflict in the book.\u00a0 Or won’t be when I get the ending written.<\/p>\n
For those wondering how a writer engages with a difficult bottleneck like this…the way that finally worked for me was writing an entire POV section that may not be in the book…exploring more and more of the lesser-bad-guy’s thinking…and then talking it over with my husband.\u00a0 Or maybe it was the previous weeks of work when nothing seemed to budge but more and more concentration was poured into the weak area.\u00a0 Or maybe it was alternating attention on this and attention on knitting.\u00a0 A writer’s mind is every bit as full of contradictions as a character’s.<\/p>\n
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I have been struggling for some time with a lesser bad guy who is one of those characters you wish would make better choices–and you give him chances to make them–but he (or she, as in Barranyi in the DEED) just will not do it.\u00a0 Barra’s reasons were mostly pride, arrogance, resentment…she was furious that […]<\/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":[107],"class_list":["post-2471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471"}],"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=2471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2473,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2471\/revisions\/2473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}