Arrant Nonsense

Is writing emotionally-charged scenes without either understating or going overboard.

I have a scene wherein Ben finds the video of the girl in the case we open on him brooding about actually being murdered. And the version I posted earlier for The Usual Suspects was...okay.

But it was just okay. And if it's "just okay" for someone like me, then for everyone else it's going to lay there on the page like a dead carp. So then I had to figure out how to punch it up without skating into NC-17 territory, because, while Ben is watching a snuff film (not because he wants to), I don't actually want to inflict that on my readers, y'know?

I believe I've fixed it. Rather than showing what he sees, I show what he hears and his reaction to it as he scrambles for the mute button on his computer, misses it, and hits the floor. Looking at the timestamp and knowing, irrevocably, how close he was to saving her. Feeling like he's betraying her (again) by slamming the lid of his laptop closed on her cries for help, but knowing that if he doesn't, he'll lose what tenuous hold he has left on his sanity.

*reads that back over* Wow. I...am a horrible, horrible person.

The direction I went skittering off in last night with the Zombies! story has decided to turn on its own tail and go off in an even more diabolical direction.

Which may very well be Piling On my poor main character, but it's got me cackling gleefully and twirling my imaginary mustache, and I don't hate the story any more. So, that's a Good, right?

I think... I hope I can stick an END at the bottom of this thing by five-thirty, which is when I will need to start dinner in time for us to watch the "Lost" finale...

x1000.

Because, not only did I turn him blond.

I emphasized the dark circles under his eyes and darkened the five-o'clock shadow.

AND THEN.

I added a vampire bite to his wrist.

Someone just shoot me.



( Full-sized pathetic-ness under the cut. )

*laughs evilly*

*runs away*

I don't even know if I'm going to use what I just wrote or not--at this point I don't see, at all, where it actually fits in the narrative.

But, DAMN. I'm mean.

I make wallpaper.



( 1024x600 image under the cut, go on click it, because DAMN. )

In writing news, I've just about decided that I haven't actually broken Ben enough. Okay, yes, horrible trauma, all his buttons getting pushed, yadda yadda.

HOWEVER.

He does have someone there with him who is trying to assiduously avoid him falling apart on her completely.

AND.

This stuff? Old hat to him. He knows when he's having a panic attack; he can deal with flashbacks. He's done this before, second verse same as the first. It's a setback, yes. But not a brand-new one.

SO.

The incident where he gets put back on the table for good and almost dies (again) doesn't involve him breaking (as Ange has already stated). It involves him taking his life back, in a final and violent burst of blood and wrath. But he's never out of control of himself during the incident--he does what he feels like he needs to do, and then it's over...he doesn't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it. Hell, he's probably saner at that moment than he's been in the entire couple of weeks leading up to it, because he's thought this entire time that he's been hallucinating.

THEREFORE.

If "breaking Ben" is really the interesting part to me (and it isn't, as I'm beginning to harbor a horrible suspicion, gratuitous H/C, with more H than C because I'm a sadistic bitch)...then I need to figure out exactly what would actually break him. I took him to that point in the last one, and he ended up in the scrub with an automatic rifle under his chin and his finger on the trigger. He didn't pull it, but it was a near thing.

Bind him up in his own guilt over ... something--some awful mistake that he makes. Someone may have to die this time. And no, I won't kill Janni off to make room for Ange. Nor will I kill Ange off to make it easier on Janni. Alex and Megan are off the table too, because I have plans for them. Amorphous, blobby plans, but plans--I definitely need to have another adventure with my adrenaline-junkie, alcohol-abusing, eccentric billionaire and his lovely werewolf wife.

Huh. Who'd have thunk, with all this...that it's not enough?

I just introduced a character in one of Ben's awful flashbacks, and she's awesome.

And then she dies.

And then Fifi dies, after Ben comes up from the flashback. And he can't do a blessed thing about it, because he can't even frakking move at that point. So, he gets to relive an Army buddy dying in front of him, while he's helpless to stop it, in technicolor glory--and then he gets to see someone else die in front of him whom he also can't help.

And I see you over there going "Buh? Who the Sam Hill is Fifi?" Wolf Girl.

Anyway. Guess what that kicks my wordcount up to?

80,000.

Whee!

So. I've been watching "True Blood." Being as it's a vampire series based on a book series I happen to like quite a bit, I thought I'd check it out.

First of all, there's not a guy on this show who isn't Smoking Hawt. Oh my lord, where did they dig these guys up from, seriously?

That being said.

I'm pretty sure that the characters I'm supposed to be glomming onto are Sookie and Bill, right?

But this is me. My favorite character in BtVS was Spike. Angel didn't make my top three favorites in his own show. I'm fair certain that Chuck is supposed to be my favorite, not Casey. Ditto: Mal, not Jayne, in Firefly. (Granted, it may be the Adam Baldwin Factor in those two. Just sayin'. Shallow agilebrit is shallow. Sue me.) Jane, not Cho, on The Mentalist. Charlie and Don, not Colby and David in Numb3rs.

Shall I go on? Give me a show with interesting and engaging major characters, and I latch onto the secondary ones like a leech. And so who am I glomming onto for True Blood?

Sam and Tara.

NOT ONLY THAT.

But it's entirely possible that Sam Trammell, who plays Sam in True Blood, may have replaced RDJ in my head as the guy who plays Ben. Because, damn, look at that face.

Now. I'm only up to S1E6. I have no idea how long it'll be before they do the Big Reveal ( Big ol' spoiler that's probably not actually one but I'm sticking it behind the cut just in case, along with an icon. )

Antubis, you are horrible and should be taken out and shot. Or at least given a good stern talking to.

I may (or may not) have an endgame coming together.

It is one in which Ben gets to make a Sophie's Choice over his girls. And in which he tells Ange he loves her. In front of Janni. And then Ange will say "I know, puppy, now go save your wife." And, of course, he does. And Ange goes poof into a pile of ash and bone because he can't save them both.

Not that there's any question he'd save Janni, because DUH, but DAMN.

Yeah, either I'm screwed up or this character is.

Actually, scratch that. It's not an either/or situation. It's entirely possible that I'm equally as screwed up as Angeline is.

Because she loves Ben. She does. But she's just done something fairly awful to him, something that will make him seriously question himself and everything he stands for and foul up his self-image for years--

And she's going to be completely puzzled when he reacts *cough* badly *cough* to this, because she has no frame of reference for thinking of what they just did together as anything but good.

Just because she's over 230 years old doesn't mean she's ever gotten good at relationships.

It's evil.

Because it realized yesterday, that with the sort of time frame I'm dealing with here--what are they going to do with him during the full moon?

And I realized that they've got to have some sort of policy in place for that sort of thing--and that it would entail, more than likely, the wolf in question back on the table wrapped in wolfsbane with a needle in his arm harvesting a delicacy for them. And thus was born, yesterday, a scene in which the Lady!Vamp pleads with the Head!Vamp to not do that to Ben again, and a scene today in which she's had him off the table for about three weeks and now it's time for him to go back, temporarily.

Non-linear writer is non-linear. But I'm taking the scenes where I can get them.

Poor puppy.

Tomorrow is Snippet Saturday. Does anyone actually read those things?