Houston, I think we have a Plot....
Nov. 19th, 2006 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnEver add a small detail to a scene, just for color, and find out later that it's The thing you need to introduce your next section?
Like, here I was, trying to figure out how to introduce this child of Giles'-- who is she, how old, where's her mum, why doesn't he know about her, how does he find out -- and I wasn't liking any of the lame ways I was coming up with. And a throw away line in the section today, mostly showing Giles avoiding Willow behind his morning paper at breakfast-- and remembering how he was in the habit of reading the Sunnydale paper-- gave me an answer. Also lets me carry forward a death kind of theme I'm exploring-- how Giles takes the deaths of Slayers and Watchers as a personal failure on his part, because he feels responsible for them.
So, an obituary. The obituary of an old lover, fiancee in fact, who first didn't believe him when he told her he wasn't really a museum curator after all, and that he to move to Sunnydale California. And then did, when he took her to the cemetary and staked a newly rising vampire, to prove he was telling the truth. And then decided, much as Olivia later, that she couldn't deal with this level of danger and freakiness in her solid, upper middle class professional lifestyle.
Don't know yet whether he learns of the child through the Obit, or at the service, where he and Willow show up (together or her following him) to pay their respects. Certainly there Willow gets the jolt of finding the girl's a potential. Not sure yet how they're going to see she's related to him. I'm thinking of making her be almost 9 instead of 3. Makes more sense timeline wise. And makes Giles' decision about whether he can really send his daughter out every night to Slay a lot more immediate a problem. Because she could hit menarche, and tap into her Slayer power, in a couple of years, or even months. Some girls are as early as 9, though most hit it about 11 or 12.
And I got a lot of this first section finished up today-- may not keep all of it, but it was useful to write. Today's word count as of now is: 1472. And for the month:
13,085 / 50,000
(26.2%)
Like, here I was, trying to figure out how to introduce this child of Giles'-- who is she, how old, where's her mum, why doesn't he know about her, how does he find out -- and I wasn't liking any of the lame ways I was coming up with. And a throw away line in the section today, mostly showing Giles avoiding Willow behind his morning paper at breakfast-- and remembering how he was in the habit of reading the Sunnydale paper-- gave me an answer. Also lets me carry forward a death kind of theme I'm exploring-- how Giles takes the deaths of Slayers and Watchers as a personal failure on his part, because he feels responsible for them.
So, an obituary. The obituary of an old lover, fiancee in fact, who first didn't believe him when he told her he wasn't really a museum curator after all, and that he to move to Sunnydale California. And then did, when he took her to the cemetary and staked a newly rising vampire, to prove he was telling the truth. And then decided, much as Olivia later, that she couldn't deal with this level of danger and freakiness in her solid, upper middle class professional lifestyle.
Don't know yet whether he learns of the child through the Obit, or at the service, where he and Willow show up (together or her following him) to pay their respects. Certainly there Willow gets the jolt of finding the girl's a potential. Not sure yet how they're going to see she's related to him. I'm thinking of making her be almost 9 instead of 3. Makes more sense timeline wise. And makes Giles' decision about whether he can really send his daughter out every night to Slay a lot more immediate a problem. Because she could hit menarche, and tap into her Slayer power, in a couple of years, or even months. Some girls are as early as 9, though most hit it about 11 or 12.
And I got a lot of this first section finished up today-- may not keep all of it, but it was useful to write. Today's word count as of now is: 1472. And for the month:
13,085 / 50,000
(26.2%)
