Progress!

[elfs]

Come Hell and high water (devil and the deep blue see, Scylla and Charybdis) I was gonna hit 10,000 words yesterday and sure enough, I hit 10,017. Most of that was in the Caprice Starr series where Caprice's partner gets killed, the killer gets away (damn, hadn't planned on that, now I need to somehow fold her back into the plot), and Caprice has a new ally. I also finished the third Ruse Angel story. I also decided that two horrible novel fragments, Intersections (a really, really bad Amber pastiche that's been idle for ten years) and Saria (a modestly bad first contact story) are just dead and have sent them to their well deserved grave in the Subversion Attic.

Now I've had five hours of pretty decent sleep, and I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of the day.

Comments

Resolution and the plot dynamic

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

I am not sure that the lack of resolution and the capture of the villain is required to move the story along and develop the plot.

Most of the classic pulps I read (have read) have a black hat or two who dogs the hero as an on going plot device or is an on going issue until a major resolution. Zeck from the Nero Wolfe series is a good example of this, so are the nazi super men in Lucky Star.

If the hero's romantic interest is killed, and the killer is not captured/punished/ "Brought to Justice" (tm) then shouldn't that provide an underlaying tension to drive the hero onward?

The guilt of not being able to save your girl(love1), not being able to capture the villain, finding solace/ love/"Hot Throbby Sex!" (tm) in the arms of someone else (love2) could increase the tension level of the over all piece and drive it harder than if the villain is quickly/cleanly/efficiently dispatched be the end of the chapter where they had killed (love1).

Don't get me wrong here, I am waiting on pins, needle and a crochet hook for your first installment of "Caprice Starr", so what ever you do I know I am going to enjoy based upon past writings.

Good luck, and congratulations. 10,000 words in a day! I am deeply impressed. My best was 5,000, and that was years ago.

Oh! on a side note. If you ever do write "The Librarian in the Tree House" series for kids let me know. I will pre-order the entire series sight unseen just based on the 4 you did. If you do it for adults I will still order it. Yes, I thought it was that good. Yes, better than "A Series of Unfortunate Events".


MPK

p.s.
with the understanding that you have already infered "no" form past postings...

Is there any chance you would link to your Subversion Attic? I for one am still interested in reading rough and early work to get a look at your proccess.

Re: Resolution and the plot dynamic

[elfs.livejournal.com]

ROFL. The "treehouse" stories are a pastiche of an existing children's book series. I read them to my kids years ago, and always wondered what would happen to the main characters when they grew up. (Come to think of it, this makes for an excellent blog post about the difference between parody, pastiche, and fanfic.)

Re: Resolution and the plot dynamic

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

The sad thing about this is that I have a huge collection of children's books and literature because of my wife. Under her influence I have read Belairs, Alexander, Cazet and innumerable others.I am going ot go ask my book dealer if he can track down the books you based those 4 stories and see if they are as good as yours.

MPK