Chewing the cud
Mar. 14th, 2007 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesThis afternoon I'll probably tackle the revisions on the short story in light of the crit comments. This morning I should do some work on the current novel, but I need to think about where it's going...
When I first got this idea about a year ago, the POV character was going to be a homeless refugee from a war. What actually appeared on the page when I started writing it a couple of weeks back was someone who'd been trapped on the wrong side of a war, but who had skills and a job -- indeed, his problem was that he was from a neutral planet, and had basically been press-ganged along with a lot of other neutrals with useful skills by the simple expedient of denying exit visas to anyone in a protected occupation.
This doesn't change the basic plot hugely, but is going to change a lot of the details. Now I have to work out whether this is my subconscious trying to tell me something, or whether it's just force of habit because I *always* write scientists and engineers. And I need to sort it out right now in chapter two, because one of the biggest changes it makes is in how and why he hooks up with the other hero -- who happens to be a member of a telepathic species whose mind has ended up in a local predator known for good reason as a hellhound.
Someone who's a refugee sleeping in alleyways has a very good reason to hook up with a large animal with a very nasty reputation. Someone who was only sleeping in an alleyway for one night because he's arrived early in a strange town and the local xenophobes won't give him a room for the night has rather less reason, or at least less of a reason that's understandable to the locals. Mutter, grumble...
When I first got this idea about a year ago, the POV character was going to be a homeless refugee from a war. What actually appeared on the page when I started writing it a couple of weeks back was someone who'd been trapped on the wrong side of a war, but who had skills and a job -- indeed, his problem was that he was from a neutral planet, and had basically been press-ganged along with a lot of other neutrals with useful skills by the simple expedient of denying exit visas to anyone in a protected occupation.
This doesn't change the basic plot hugely, but is going to change a lot of the details. Now I have to work out whether this is my subconscious trying to tell me something, or whether it's just force of habit because I *always* write scientists and engineers. And I need to sort it out right now in chapter two, because one of the biggest changes it makes is in how and why he hooks up with the other hero -- who happens to be a member of a telepathic species whose mind has ended up in a local predator known for good reason as a hellhound.
Someone who's a refugee sleeping in alleyways has a very good reason to hook up with a large animal with a very nasty reputation. Someone who was only sleeping in an alleyway for one night because he's arrived early in a strange town and the local xenophobes won't give him a room for the night has rather less reason, or at least less of a reason that's understandable to the locals. Mutter, grumble...