*laughs evilly while twisting the knife*

[agilebrit]

So. I'm doing (yet another) editing pass, and I get to the part where the bad guys have not!Harry. Strapped to a table, down three pints of blood. No chance of rescue, like, at all--Sekrit Underground Lair territory. The Head Bad Guy is pissed at him anyway, because not!Harry killed his nephew (with good reason, not that the Head Bad Guy cares about his reasons).

Original line: "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

This is...a good line. I like it. It gets the job done. However.

New line: "When are you going to kill me?"

Better line. Straighter and much more to the point. There's no "is there any chance I'm going to get out of this alive" here, because, well...there's not. And not!Harry isn't stupid, so he knows this.

I don't just like the new line, I adore the new line. Because way to make the Lady!Doc even more uncomfortable than she already is with the situation.

You know, I'd stop doing editing passes if the thing didn't keep getting better and better every time I did one.

I haven't even put in the Artist!not!Harmony part yet.

Comments

[kensieg.livejournal.com]

If not!Harry dies what happens to the story?

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well. To borrow a line from Monty Python, he gets better.

Although it was iffy for awhile there. Because while I was writing this, I really had to consciously make the decision to let him "live" (in a manner of speaking), because, whether I wanted it to be or not originally, the story really is All About Him, and killing him off in the middle would have been Bad Writing.

But it could have gone either way. Obviously, had I left him dead, the story would have veered off in a far different direction than it did. And I have no idea where that direction would have taken me.

[kensieg.livejournal.com]

He comes back to life? Yay!

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

...ish. The procedure vamps him, which the bad guys really should have thought of, but it didn't do that to the test bunnies, so... yeah. Unexpected outcome is unexpected. ;)