Slow But Painful, Revisited

The writing is just not cracking along these days. I am trying to the honor the Pattern and just work on it a little each day. I did have a minor revelation about the scene I've been slogging through-- unfortunately, it's a revelation that requires rewriting the scene. Just goes to show that no matter how much advance planning you do, you can't always see the pitfalls of the plan until you're in the thick of it. In this case, I have this high-action sequence with big story-changing decisions, followed by chase and danger. Our heroes just barely get away, and speed away as fast as they can to a rendezvous point... where they sit around for a few hours, bored and tired, making conversation until someone comes along to pick them up.

Now, the conversation is important. Willa and Akenam have been both foe and ally to one another, but they've never exchanged more than a few sentences before this. The dialogue is unfolding pretty much like I'd hoped... and yet somehow the scene is just not flowing. There's not enough energy. I was also having a lot of trouble figuring out where the hell their transport is while they're sitting around waiting for it. It's not like it has anything else to do in all of North America. And this is a time-sensitive mission. Why wouldn't it be waiting for them?

Wait-- why wouldn't it be waiting for them? Why can't this whole scene happen inside the flyer? Just because I originally envisioned it happening around a campfire doesn't mean I have to stick to that. Especially since there was plenty o'campfire at the end of Act I.

So yet again, I am combining two sections. In the first, the interaction is important but the setting isn't; in the second, the fact of moving from point A to B is important, but nothing else really happens. Seems like kind of a duh on my part, hm?

In other news, I am reading again. Due to the obsession phase of the Pattern, I've barely read anything this year. Now I'm working my way through The Name of the Wind, which is excellent, and I just ripped through two volumes of Castle Waiting, a graphic novel I heard about on Library Hungry. I love love loooooved it, and urge anyone with the slightest interest in graphic novels, fairy tales, domestic fantasy, or feminist nuns to read it immediately.