I’m at a place in my novel that is quite messy plot-wise. Certain events take place without adequate justification. Characters disappear only to magically reappear in a later scene without explanation. So where were they during the action? Much fixing is needed.

Talking with my daughter yesterday gave me a possible solution for one problem. Her suggestion gives an interesting sub-plot with great potential.

Now if I can just keep my characters from farting off and doing their own thing. After all, some of them actually have roles to play in the book. If they don’t stop it, they might find their jobs replaced by others much more competent.

Aargh. I discovered another plot loophole. Don’t worry, that’s just the sound of me banging my head against the wall.

You know the drill. When writing a scene, we are to show the action, not tell about it. Sometimes in the middle of a word count push it is easy to tell about something instead of showing it. For example, when I first wrote my NaNo, one scene had the following:

“Three weeks ago, maybe a month, okay,” he glanced behind me at Nikolai, his eyes shying away in fright. Maybe he did know we were vampires. Drugs may have given him more vision that even he wanted. I’d scoured the street people asking for information on how long Thia had been in residence in the old hotel. They had lost their home, and I needed to know how long ago they had been forced out.

After re-writing, much better:

Nikolai surveyed the crowd outside the hotel. While we were inside, they had once again congregated around the stairs. “That one,” he said, and walked towards a dirty man. He looked no different from the rest of them.
“Someone was in the hotel last night.” Nikolai’s gaze was piercing, but the fellow’s eyes darted His eyes darted nervously between us, and he refused to make eye contact. I wondered if he knew we were vampires. He wiped the back of his hand over his runny nose. Yuck. “How long were they here?”
“Don’t know.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. “Wasn’t here. Don’t know.” He turned to leave and Nikolai grabbed him by his shirt collar. Nikolai spun him to face us. The man’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head from side to side. “No, no. Don’t. Please, please.”
“Speak,” Nikolai commanded. I thought Nikolai rolled his mind when the fellow started to babble.

“Three weeks, maybe a month, okay,” he glanced at Nikolai, his eyes shying away in fright. Maybe he did know we were vampires. Maybe drugs gave more vision than even he wanted.

“Tell me about them. How many were there?” We needed to know if they were working together and infighting had broken out, or if it was something else.
“I don’t know,” he whined, wiping his nose with the back of his hand again. Hopefully he would be so scared after this he would seek rehab. He looked nervously around him, like he was afraid of the shadows. If he saw anything during the last month, I could understand that. My teeth were itching again, but I was not going to bite him. Who knew what ugly diseases he had. I didn’t think his blood was overly clean.
Nikolai sighed in frustration, and I placed a hand on his arm. “Let me try,” I said. “Come sit down.” I pointed towards the stairs, and the man followed me gratefully, glancing at Nikolai with wide eyes as he did so.
“Where did you sleep while she was here?” I asked him, trying for sympathy.
“Just around. There aren’t options if you live on the street.” There were plenty of options, but when you are desperate, it wouldn’t seem like it.
“You slept in the hotel before then?” He nodded. “And recently, did you sleep near here?” If he wasn’t in the area, he might not have seen anything.
“Yeah. Some.” He glanced around “Mostly. But there were so many of those big ugly guys,” he glanced at Trog. “Sorry. There were about six of them maybe.”
“Is that all you saw?”
“No, there was that creepy woman. I think she ate people.” He leaned in and whispered the last to me, but we all heard it. Yeah, that sounded like Thia. “Lacy disappeared one night. A couple of days later, there were bones outside. That’s when most everyone else split.” He paused and glanced around nervously again. “Except for me. I didn’t go. I haven’t got anywhere else to go.” He was whining again, but I didn’t blame him. I thought he’d be too afraid to say any more.
“Yeah, go one. Anyone else,” I promted.
“No one came out during the day, only at night.” That made sense. Trolls don’t like the sunlight any more than vampires, and ghouls aren’t much better. He scratched his head in thought, and white flakes drifted to the ground. I tried not to think about the filth. “I took to sleeping in the dumpster over there.” He pointed to a bin tucked into the corner of a building near by. Trash spilled out the sides and I wondered when the city had last come by for pick up. Not that it was any of my business.
“Good place to keep an eye on things,” I commented. “You must have seen something.”
He glanced us again, the look of fear back on his face. “Vampires, like you. Lots of them,” he whispered. He grabbed the corner of my coat, and I fought the urge to cringe. Or think about how dirty he was. “Protect me from them, please.” His howl was one of pure misery. What were we running, a home for strays? First a troll, now a homeless man. But I couldn’t leave him on the street at the possible mercy of strange vampires. Even I’m not that cruel.
“How many is lots?”

He scratched his head again. I wished he would stop doing that—the dirt bothered me. “I don’t know, less than ten, but more than you guys here.”

There, I think that’s better.

Hopefully by now, everyone has seen Sex in the City and this won’t be a spoiler. For the most part, I enjoyed the movie, but one scene had such a large continuity issue it detracted tremendously from the plot. Before the wedding, Lily picks up Cary’s cell phone, doesn’t say anything and then places it in her purse. On the other end of said phone, Big is panicked. He calls Cary again and again leaving message after message. When Big isn’t at the library, Cary panics and calls Big on Miranda’s cell phone.

Cut to the mess that results. No wedding, Big standing in a pile of flower petals, tears etc. Cary is a mess, but agrees to head to Mexico with her friends. So far I’m okay. As far as I’m concerned, the cell phone is moldering in Lily’s purse to be found… later. Who cares when, or even whether, it is found. The lack of a phone served its purpose.

Except on the beach after Cary starts to pull herself together just a bit, she suddenly has the cell phone. She sits there and listens to Big’s voice as he begs her to call him. She tosses the phone into the waves. But how the hell did she get the cell phone? Why wasn’t it shown when the phone was found in Lily’s purse?

More was made of Miranda’s offhand remark to Big. This was also a factor in Big’s decision, but if he’d been able to reach Cary everything would have been fine. So why wasn’t I shown when the cell phone was found in Lily’s purse? Did Charlotte find it and slip it into Cary’s bag thinking it was unimportant? Why not show me that. Everything else would still have followed perfectly well, but I needed to see that, especially after making an issue of it. Otherwise, she should never have found the cell phone.

I have a character in my book that keeps disappearing. I found him once in a graveyard buried under a pile of leaves. Now, I’m about 30,000 words into the re-write, and I’ve realized that even though I found him under the pile of leaves, he’s disappeared again. Just gone. I remember as I wrote that he kept disappearing. He’s the same one that vanishes before the end of the book, never to be seen again.

Pondering this problem yesterday, I had an ah ha moment. Simply: my MC doesn’t find him in the graveyard. There is another scene upcoming where is sudden re-appearance will make more sense. Now, not only will she have to escape, but she will have to rescue a troll. One that could be her enemy.

Decide to work on your laptop instead of your desktop. Email yourself the file. Download. Work on it steadily for and hour and a half. Close the file and open your flash drive. Try to find the file to place in your flash drive. Great idea, except said file didn’t want to be found. A search using find revealed the older version (not even the one I’d downloaded an hour and a half ago). And it wasn’t to be found in the temp files either. Panic. Breathing exercises. Swearing. More breathing exercises

After much swearing, I did finally find it. Hallelujah! Now it is saved to my flash drive. And emailed to myself just to be safe. I don’t trust computers. Rightly so apparently.

Sometimes others see things in our writing that we didn’t intend. And sometimes, what they see is brilliant. In my writing group, one person thought one of my characters listened to music constantly to block out his master’s ability to read his mind. It hadn’t occured to me. But it makes so much sense. Such a awesome idea. Too bad it wasn’t mine.

Yeah, is it any wonder writing is so tricky:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo1XFz0kac0

Or Why E-Readers Won’t Catch On

The more revisions I make, the more confusing things get. I’ve made some major changes to the story, and the original is still deeply imbedded in my subconsious. This creates continuity issues. On a computer screen, this means scrolling back and forth. It means remembering on page 13, this character made this statement this way. But wait, did she also make another statement? Does it contradict the first?

On paper, I can read it and seemingly assimilate it differently. Words don’t loose their context and therefore their meaning. What works best for me is a combination of paper and computer. After my initial draft, I printed a hard copy of my novel. From there, I made copious notes in the margins. And on the backs of the page. And in notebooks.

On to the hard editing, I open the initial draft and work from my handwritten notes. This works fine until I get to something that conflicts with a change I’ve made. I find sometimes I can’t remember whether the change has been made, or only thought through in my mind. This is where a hard copy works best for me. I can refer back to the page, see what I’ve actually done and how. Okay, so I’m lo-tech and simply get lost when I have to scroll back and forth repeatedly on a computer screen.

Early on, I deleted one sentence. One. Not a paragraph. But one sentence. And it changed everything. It created a major plot problem. That one sentence was a red herring, but one that I now realize needs to remain in the story. Today, I had an ah ha moment and realized I need an additional scene at a later point for that same plot point. Putting it back in will also solve a couple of other problems. Because I was driving at the time, I had plenty of time to think of plot points. There is another upcoming part that wouldn’t work because of one character’s abilities. I needed a way around it that was plausible. I’m so excited with the solution that came to mind. It will change the ending dramatically, but for the better. Did I say I was excited?