A peek inside my slimy skull to explain why I often have to do rewrites.

Supposedly, letting folks see how my slime wraps around problems while writing is good. Not sure I'm sold on that idea, but what they hey, with the blog on fire this month, I'll let folks take a peak inside the fortress of unbreakable bone called my skull, and try to decipher the events as real or a glimpse into that alternate reality called my thought process.

Today's big dilemma came about from trying to fix a story, and finally understanding the two worst parts of the tale were the Demon/Ghost failed arc and the knife fight. While the knife fight will be easy to fix, that ghost/demon arc, well, it required some thinking.

I'd already determined that demons are not, in my world setting, extra-planar beings from an alternate reality, but from the same layer of the multi-verse, just a different planet. So, how does this change the magic of "summoning" a demon, and its powers?

Yeah, I had to open a bucket of worms in the edit. Stupid. Turned a quick fix into a total rewrite, I bet. The story better improve from it, or I'm so gonna water-board this character.

Okay, so, taking a look at this idea, it seemed dumb, and I initially shelved it. Which left the story fix stalled in a quagmire about as navigable as federal politics during this budget crisis. Trying several other things never felt right, or changed the story too much for it to remain as part of the Anadrakmas mythos I've been crafting up around some older stories and ideas. As the main character, Dzhino, evolves into a character in the Hunts of Scorpio Kenrai (Jinotazu), I refused to just give in to that impulse for breaking him off into his own little world.

So, I reloaded my SimCity4 game, the best thinking tool I have for mindless activity, and sat down to play, which usually gets the slime at least percolating, if not into a roiling boil. Four days into this, and just as I found all my little add-on's for the game, the bubbles floating behind the eyelids began to make sense of the issue.

Looking at the planets, I began to realize I'd already set one of the rules down in the rough idea and early chapters draft of "Crossing of the Shadow". That crossing between the spheres could only occur during narrow windows of closest approach. That let loose the idea that while during the closest approach, the body could cross, but other times, save when something, say the sun, intervened, only the spirit could.  Which was in the story, if poorly executed.

Taking it a bit further, kicking the idea around amid a bout of allergy induced sneezes from black mold (by and far the least miserable of my allergies along with walnut pollen) and some smoking (yes, bad idea during an allergy attack, but as it was post-attack, and used to clear the residual gunk out, tough).more of it gelled. Maybe. Congealed like grease might be a better description.

What if each sphere had its own, astronomically assigned powers, granted to its denizens. Say that the spirit could inhabit a being on the other worlds, but only while in the sky above that body, and only if not blocked by a certain mass of earth or stone? Could the being be from a moon of that sphere, say a lesser servant sphere of the main sphere? How does that affect powers.

And now you see the problem. How to keep all this from spilling out in a rush, inside the story, and yet keep the concept of the original tale, and prevent info dump burnout in the readers. Yeah, I'll have a total rewrite, but the story will be better. And thanks to the gang over on FB's Fantasy Writers group who let me talk it out, gave me some input, and watched it all get slimy in the process without tossing their cookies (I hope).

Or else Dzhino gets water-boarded. And being an assassin won't stop the writer from doing it to him, either.

Why I Waterboard my Characters - A poem inspired by Billenius today

He sits calmly sipping his tea,
the gaping wounds I inflicted aimed
like the bores of cannons unseen
into my soul seeking his revenge
for being the poor whipping boy
I take out my frustrations upon.

Angers he grounds into the stones
and words are broken upon shields
raised to keep him safely insulated
from more dangers, yet failing constantly
as I toss into his roads
sinkholes of doom and ravenous beasts.

Billenius sits calmly through it all
sipping that tea when chance allows
waiting for the arrival of Revenge
in that perfect moment of terror
when he says after I save...
..."Oh, you meant what really happened?"

(21May2012 - Dyfedd Rex)

Written in memorial of all the times Billenius seems to speak a different tale when I go back to edit... and yes, I hear him say that with a soft chuckle of evil in his throat.... which is why he gets beat up so much.