New Boo Woo

There's a saying that runs, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person," and indeed, with a sudden flurry of Real-Life Business coming up all of a sudden this week I've gotten much more done in the area of frivolous accomplishments than I had in several weeks of basically nothing else taking up my time.

Among the things I've gotten done this week have been completing all of the Riddler Challenges in a run-through of Batman: Arkham City, baking brownies, and completing another full year of existence -- which isn't as much of an achievement as it might have been in earlier eras, but still impresses people enough to net some rewards, including a ticket to the 'Halloween Haunt' at Knott's Berry Farm (which was ~~awesome~~ by the way, though honestly I think their mazes would be scarier if they didn't have quite so many people in costumes jumping out from every corner, distracting from their marvellously decorated sets. Jump scares are all well and good but, like spices on high-quality meat, they needn't be so liberally applied when you've actually got the budget to do good, solid creepy-as-all-get-out theming. A trivial nitpick that, though; they put on a hell of a show).

In terms more relevant to this site, though, I also got a little birthday present from the Muse, in the form of a small unexpected fire in a public place (not at Knott's, someplace else), which was put out easily without undue fuss, but not before it sparked (har-har) a line of thought that lead to uncovering a central missing theme in Nuthin' Gold -- revealing, really, no less than the heart and the point of the whole thing, and how a couple of characters I thought would stay on the sidelines are in fact right at the middle of it all. It's a feeling rather like having had several verses to a song, then suddenly clicking on what the chorus should be, and with it, what the actual tune is.

It'd be nice to say that this means future chapters will come out more quickly, but I've learned not to make such guarantees. It does, at least, mean that now I know what's in those future chapters, and what needs to be done to the already-written parts to support and develop the unwritten, and in general what the point of the whole thing is -- or rather what the theme is, which may really be a better thing for a story to have than a 'point', or worse yet a 'message'.

It does unfortunately mean that there's another pony I have to kill off in the indefinite past, or at least deal an ambiguous degree of grievous harm; but for writers, as for evil overlords, sometimes you just have to commit a murder or two to get anything done.

I'm also indebted to several commenters on the first chapter who liked a certain aspect that I hadn't consciously noticed was there -- or rather that wasn't there -- that is to say, I got several favorable comments about how a lot of backstory was implied but not explained in the chapter. It seems like such a simple thing, closely related to the bedrock "show, don't tell" rule, but looking over the parts written and planned with the filter on of "does this information need to be here?" revealed huge piles of expositional deadwood, needless 'worldbuilding' clutter. Clearing all that away -- not just trimming words from the text, but actively throwing out every part of the unstated background that couldn't prove itself relevant to this story -- has done a world of good to the progress of Nuthin' Gold, and I'd recommend a similar exercise to any author who has a feeling of indefinable 'fuzziness' in their current project.

So yeah. Another chapter, boom. I'm mildly miffed that it turns out the little button to send a blog entry to all subscribers of a story had in fact not been doing that, but at least the actual posting of a chapter will alert them.

Incidentally, Bell Pepper comes from Contraptionology!, wherein he impressed me as among a very small number* of OC Significant Others who actually feel like a good match for one of Our Little Ponies, as well as a splendid example of how to develop a relationship naturally within a story, rather than just kind of bonking two ponies together. He's a bit taller here, and I rather doubt that the events of Contraptionology! ever occurred in this particular continuity, but still basically the same guy, so credit to Skywriter.

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* "1"

Comments

[nemryn]

he impressed me as among a very small number* of OC Significant Others who actually feel like a good match for one of Our Little Ponies, as well as a splendid example of how to develop a relationship naturally within a story, rather than just kind of bonking two ponies together.

The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian is also pretty good on this front.