Those who can't do...

Made my 1200 over the end of the VP-8 scene, and then came back to the keyboard just before bed with a waterfall of notes that brings the plan all the way up to the end of Part II. Folding in that left turn to Albuquerque, a key revelation about Mary Cartwright (the Tewa-speaking NAGPRA representative who came out to the dig outside Holloman AFB), the fallout of Penny's unauthorized walk deeper into the missile range, the Demon Core, Clovis points...

But I realized today I've slipped again into a bad habit. I wanted to have clearer clues and have the plot change with each clue. I've done that, more or less. Even if there isn't a shooting at the giant pistachio until several chapters later.

But basically Penny is going around talking to people. She isn't having to struggle for these, not mostly. No disguises, no fights, no side quests ("Sure, I'll tell you all about the Christie Pit, but first can you take these corn muffins to a coffee shop in Taos for me?")

And I could have done something interesting at the Shroud Museum. Confront Penny with her faith (or lack of it), and at least give her some morally gray choices.

I haven't even done any plot-tangential delays to her "Go to the next location, pick up the next plot coupon" journeys. The best I got is I had her help a tourist family take pictures of their kids with the aliens.

I mean, sheesh, Michael Rennie could have asked her to help setting up the conference room.

The one that started as a side quest is now an integral part of the plot. "Dynel" (Penny doesn't know her yet, but was struck by the vivid color of the hair dye she is using) was just a thing Penny saw and maybe said something about. Now it is a crux moment for her emotionally, transitioning her from avenging Lon's death to being willing to listen and find a compromise with the new safety officer at WIPP.

I'm also getting increasingly uncomfortable on this one about all of these real people and places. The Shroud Museum is such a small (but earnest) little operation I really, really don't want to make fun of them or otherwise show them in a bad light. Hell, I sort of hate to be putting in print the word on the street; that the White Sands Mall is dying.

***

Anyhow, the Viking book (next part of Penny's Road Trip) is looking more and more likely. No ideas yet where else to put her on her cross-country journey in search of America. Very possibly Boston. Perhaps I can schedule another trip back to my own birth town.

Today's plot bunny, however, isn't a bunny. It is a turkey.

(image stolen from Poseidon's Scribe)

I want to make a writer's lexicon. Not a complete one, not one with all the APA-standard citations. Just what I am seeing in the field today, and what I've coined myself that seems to work (some of which are making minor traction outside my own notes).

And mostly just being cranky, clever, and talking about books and ideas and tropes and writing philosophy from a constructivist standpoint. The history of "Mary-Sue," what the evolving usage says culturally, how it may help or hinder a writer (particularly a beginning writer, against whom it often appears as a threat or even a weapon).

The downside is, well, having to do the work. Of doing the looking up of histories and usage and at least credit sources.

And that's the worse part. I can't just copy the Turkey City Lexicon, or five hundred pages from TVTropes, because those are copyright creations. Even if their CC status allows, it isn't right to do. I need to add value.

Which paradoxically means that a complete lexicon (itself quixotic) is morally questionable. Better to take selections and build upon them with original thoughts and writing.

Which does work because the original Turkey City, as with Diane Wyneth-Jones "Tough Guide" works, are the products of skilled writers. They are short precise stinging and to the point.

I...am not. Verbose, I can do.

(And I already have a cover concept).