Weird thing happened last night. (Before the part where my need-for-new-glasses made me mistake a lit-up tree with bright fall foliage for a fire in the distance and caused me to go on a long walk to find out where the fire was and if anyone had reported it.)
I was thinking about the scene I needed to write today, and realized that there was something wrong with it.
So, the two leads of the original work are on an expedition to hunt down the psychopath who wiped out a few small clans just before the outbreak of the war that they all just finished fighting. Unfortunately, for reasons that would take too long to explain here, they were forced to bring along people from various other clans as well, including this one major asshole who literally defied orders and committed a significant war crime. (This was not something he did in canon, btw, just in this fic (unlike the clan-slaughtering the psychopath did), but I feel confident in saying that what he did lined up well with the character's canon personality, especially in the live-action drama.) Anyway, so what I wrote yesterday had the asshole getting in a big argument with the rest of the team and storming off, and them realizing that despite how glad they are to be rid of him, they need to follow him, because what if he vents his rage on others?
The scene for today, according to my original plan, was for them to arrive too late to a village that he had vented his rage on, killing about half the population, with the wounded survivors able to identify him as the one responsible. A particular OC had been created to go along on the expedition exclusively so there would be someone to escort those survivors to safety while the rest of the team traveled onwards in their hunt for the psycho (as there was no sign of the asshole leaving the village on foot, meaning he had flown home on his sword).
Sounds harrowing, but an acceptable story scene, right?
Unfortunately, there was a major snag.
See, the asshole didn't fly home alone in frustrated defeat: he flew home with the psychopath as a prize, bringing him on board as his clan morphed from annoying to outright evil. But the heroes don't know the psycho was there, and so they continue their search, unaware that their prey has eluded them.
You can probably see the problem, right?
If there were survivors, why wouldn't they tell anyone that this wanted murderer (who has a very distinctive face) had been in their town?
The answer, of course, is that there is no possible reason they wouldn't share that info, so either he had been hiding and no one knew he was there until the asshole arrives (unlikely at best) or there cam be no survivors.
So I had to opt for the latter. I had to make the whole village die in the attack (made it a smaller village to compensate, but I still feel awful about it) and just had someone there who had stumbled onto the scene late in the slaughter, having only caught a glimpse of the asshole before hiding in terror.
That meant that the OC I had created just to be someone to take the survivors to safety no longer needs to exist, and I can delete him from the second draft. (Not deleting him now because NaNo word counts, of course.)
The story will be stronger this way (especially since now the witness is a canon character I had already planned on introducing later in the fic, and this will be a more natural way to do so) but I still feel dumb for having not having thought of any of this until last night. I mean, yeah, I got more words out of it for NaNo (the new OC was introduced since November started) but that's not really the point. As long as this thing is, and as much work as it'll need on the next draft, I hate that I just made myself even more work. 😖
On top of that, I have no idea what to do for the next scene. The next on in my outline was back at the home of the fic's lead, and it centered on his sister acting dreamy because the man she loves--who had rejected her earlier--is now actively courting her. (This is a canon event, btw. In the original novel, he breaks off their arranged marriage, then years later realizes "oh, wait, she's actually my perfect woman" and becomes the most devoted husband (for about a year, then he dies horribly) and evidently no one in universe thought it odd that he could have had such a major about face.) I feel like if I go straight from "horrible slaughter" to "giddy sister in love" it will make it feel like she's a terrible person (even though she has no idea the slaughter happened) and make her romance look awful. (All the more so since the one behind the slaughter was her soon-to-be-husband's cousin!)
But I don't really have anything plot-wise to go in there. Most of the plot for the second half of the novel can't really get going yet, because until the big bad of the second half starts making his move, the good guys don't really realize there's anything they still have to be fighting against, other than the general heartlessness of the political side of their society.
Hopefully I'll think of something before I need to start writing tomorrow.
Anyway, numbers!
Total words in document: 289,608
Words written today: 3,267
Words written in November to date: 39,608
(Pity I couldn't find another 374 words to write; ending a day on a palindrome was always fun back in official NaNo days...)
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