Arrant Nonsense

But I'm doing this re-read of the novelthing, and I've decided that I really really like Ben in Tactical Mode and need to put him in it more often. Because competence is sexy. I manage it in my three villain battles (no scream-and-leap in this one like in the last one when he was crazed with grief), but Ben should do it for more "mundane" everyday dealing-with-shit too. I'll have to figure out how to slide that in.

A follow-on to last week's:

Janni watched Ben's car drive down the street, until it turned the corner out of the neighborhood and was lost to sight. Maybe she should have fought him harder on leaving, but his desperation had been nearly palpable and she wasn't sure that she'd have been doing him any favors to keep him home.

She sat on the couch, bereft. She missed him already. And, oh, yeah, she'd caught the lack of promise to come back, but calling him on it seemed like twisting the knife he already had buried in his chest. She wished--

She wished she could convince him that she didn't care who he'd slept with in prison, or why. The fact that he'd come back to her in one piece was all that mattered.

Well. One piece physically. Psychologically and emotionally, he might be in a worse place than he'd been when she'd found him in the parking lot of the reception center all those years ago. Haunted eyes and a gun beside him on the seat...

Gun. Oh, god.

She checked his sock drawer for the Glock and cried into his pillow when she found it missing. The note he'd left didn't help: Knew you'd look. Not planning on using it. Just in case, honey.

Signed with a heart, with a B in the middle. Her own heart cracked right in half.

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We spent the morning with the lovely and effulgent bigsciencybrain, flying the Cessna up to Logan to visit her before she moves 2,000 miles away to Virginia *sob*. Alas, it was a bumpy ride, so not as enjoyable as it would have been under better circumstances.

BUT, we had a fine old time conversing, and ate a yummy lunch at Angie's.

Not only that, but the scene that was SUCKING at me yesterday is vastly improved today. I printed it out to take with me, eyeballs on paper the old-fashioned way, and ... yeah. Much more horrifying. Go, me. It's bleeding red ink right now because I haven't fixed it in the actual doc yet, but this will be remedied shortly.

Part of the problem is that I know something Ben doesn't know, and the reader knows something Ben doesn't know, and thus it's difficult to ramp up the dramatic tension and the visceral horror he feels when confronted with...what he's confronted with.

Maybe I'll keep that bit a secret from the reader. Is that cheating?

As I do. And I decided to look something up in the first book to see if I could use it to hook them together a bit.

Turns out I couldn't, but I read over the climax and found it needed fixing, desperately, because of a characterization thing I didn't actually notice until I started this one and pushed Ben to the breaking point throughout instead of just at stated times.

Ben talks (and thinks) in fragments when he's really stressed. He tends to get ultra-choppy with the sentences when he's fallen off the end of his rope. And thus, the climax part where he's out in the scrub with an M4 under his chin needed a hack job.

Which I have accomplished.

Now I need to go in and finish this other scene...

ARGH.

Saturday meeting with the Writing Buddy.

Who promptly kicked my ass. Deservedly so. Because I seriously need to get out of Ben-in-prison mode and start figuring out what the hell Janni is doing to find him, how I'm going to pull Alex and Megan in so they're integral to the plot besides Alex being the transportation out of there, and getting some other villain scenes in.

Not to mention the whole "how am I going to wrap this up so these poor people have some semblance of a happy ending because it's a romance, not a tragedy" issue. I've got a triangle and none of these people are villains. But none of them are saints, either. So, yeah.

He gave me some ideas. I just have to, you know, implement them. Rather than piling more angst on Ben's head. Also, Ange's head, but she can handle it.

What I need to do is (first of all) math, so I know where I'm at for the Weekly Word Count (wouldn't want to fall down on that score). And, secondly, perhaps watch some Missing Persons movies or read some books for procedures. Because I'm just flailing around right now--I don't actually know what Janni needs to do to find Ben, or how she even goes about looking. And this is a problem.

Ben just coughed up part of his lung. Literally.

Good times.

Ghost Ship story? What Ghost Ship story?

Have a snippet. Yeah, no, I'm not setting it up.

"We were talking, the night I got taken. About a client with a cheating husband. Kidding around, like you do. And she said 'You know I'd kill you, right?'" Stopped. Swallowed. "And I told her I'd hand her the gun and bare my chest against the muzzle." The conversation, the last one he'd had with Janni, was seared into his memory.

"Oh, puppy."

"So, in the dream, I give her my Glock and strip my shirt off and stand there. Waiting. And she just...looks at me. And then she drops the gun, turns, and walks off without a word. Like it's not even worth her time or energy to kill me."

"Shh." Ange stroked his hair. "She wouldn't do that."

His arm tightened around her waist. "Are you kidding? I shouldn't even be doing this, let alone--"

"If we didn't do this, you'd have shattered like a porcelain teacup long before now. You have anyway, a few times."

"Yeah. But there used to be this bright line, you know? The one that never got crossed under any circumstances. I've not only crossed it, I've obliterated it. The difference between right and wrong, sane and crazy? I don't know what that is anymore." Shaking. "And I'm just not sure that letting you put me back together is the right thing to do."

"Leave you shattered? Send you back to the lab? I'm physically incapable of doing that."

"I know. I also know that if--fuck, when, dammit, when--" Squeezing his eyes shut, he took a second to get ahold of himself. "When she finds me again, she's going to hate me. With good reason."

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Poor Ben. No, I'm not setting it up.

I have some new folks on my flist *waves* so, for you guys, all you have to know is that the guy in my icon is a werewolf, he's been tossed in vampire prison, and he's been losing his mind (he thinks) for about... two months now. He's fragile anyway, so, yeah.

Warning: attempted suicide follows. If this is a trigger for you, don't click the cut; if you came here via direct link, click away now.
( Read more... )

Even though Ben and Alex are played by the same man in my head, they are two very different characters. Alex does run-on sentences when he's stressed. Ben does fragments.

REMEMBER THIS.

I've punched up the scene that's been giving me fits. Split a lot of sentences. And I did it in a separate doc in case it sucked. I don't think it sucks, I think it's vastly improved.

( Cut for possibly triggery stuff involving suicide. )

vastly improved. I love Ben when he's conflicted. Poor guy has no idea which way is up in that scene. And, contrary to Popular Opinion, the Healing Vagina isn't all that. It is, in fact, making him worse, not better.

Mainly because it's the wrong vagina. And thus, he hates himself. *evil laughter*

My climax is teh suxxors, though. It needs MOAR.

More what? I don't know. I just know it's...flat. Lacks punch. I need to look at the language of it, I guess. It's a good outline of what happens, but I think there may be more telling than showing there. I'll let that percolate for awhile.