The dangers of au vis

Au vis openings are always tempting.  It is nice to have something that makes a good hook, especially over a transition; a linking element, a match cut, even a Gilligan cut.

The problem comes when you need to backfill. And it starts with the backfill being almost necessarily in past perfect tense.

I have a new rule. "Any part of a story in past perfect should either be long enough to allow it to be dropped into simple past, or so short the question never comes up."

That is, either it should be a brief recap, or it should be a full flashback. Because what falls between ends up taking things that should be in a proper scene; that is, should be dramatized with full five-senses writing, and turning them into explanation instead. Basically, unless you work to fix this problem, the recap ends up being all telling, no showing.

I had two of them in the Roswell sequence. I had a hook opening with her driving a pickup truck, and I had a fake-out opening for the Roswell museum scene.

And I didn't even realize this was a problem. It wasn't like I had anything I needed to say about Roswell other than the way that one sketchy incident is heavily leveraged as the big tourist draw. Practically the town identity.

No, the problem is that I'm not letting the reader enjoy the experience of visiting the place. I don't need to give more information about the town. I need to have Penny experience it in real time, not in a rushed recap (rushed because otherwise I'd be either stuck in past perfect so long it would get uncomfortable, or I'd have to do the "slip" in and out of full flashback mode.

The driving is actually worse. There's a bunch of character beats here. Really, that's one of the three things the drive is doing; scene-setting, a little philosophical conceit, and a chance for Penny to do some stuff in character.

That was my big accomplishment of today. Realizing I needed to toss two more chapters and rewrite those.

(The real project today was looking over the outline and trying to figure out what actual scenes that make it into an actual novel. It probably needs more stuff happening. But not exactly plot. Maybe C plots; maybe some fetch quests.)