Looking for Stakes

I’m missing some stakes.

Short of avoiding personal harm I’ve not given Charming anything to overcome. The faceless evil trope tempts me. I like reading it when done well, but I prefer not to write it. I like my villains to have reasons—good reasons.

Brain back from unrecorded flights.

Finding her parents pops its head up as a thing, but never gains much traction in my thoughts. I’m not keen on making the dermatographia the crux either. Or I’ve not figured out how to make it the crux. Hard to tell which.

Back from a minor break.

I found a twist that might work to make Charming’s dermatographia much more interesting: time travel. If dermatographia could be used to communicate with people in the past that might be a fun way to raise the stakes. Charming now has a power worth controlling or guarding or developing.

Some of my immediate thoughts—Charming’s desire to reform Roundmartin—might lead to a raft of paradox challenges. Challenges that don’t seem fun to manage. But that’s what spreadsheets are for I suppose.

Need to think this new thought over some.

195 words on day 530

More Uniquely Benny

I’ve had technical difficulties that ate up much of the time I might have otherwise devoted to not exactly writing.

I’ve not yet stopped to consider whether selling t-shirts on The Song made any sense. I figure not everyone can sell fish or shells or some import from upriver. Of course that’s sort of the challenge when you’ve decided on a world showing off both magic and intermediate future tech like hover cars and floating cities. We’ve got 100 story buildings and supersonic passenger jets along side tribespeople living in jungles and homeless living on the streets now. Maybe a floating city and a canoe import aren’t so polar.

But maybe there is something more uniquely Benny then just a shirt?

130 words on day 519

Charming’s Cause Worsened

I’m going to back peddle on my attempted plan today. I was going to extend yesterday’s scene into the argument and outcome. Instead I’ll think it through a bit more. As much as you may think I write too much about what I’m planning on doing, I don’t feel the same. Much of what I do here when I’m writing about my writing is more of a brainstorm exercise. Considering the possibilities of what might happen or what could be the reason. What I’m doing now is to take a scene I know I need and writing out the goals of that scene.

I don’t know how to do that, so if what comes next looks no different from what came before what can I say?

This scene is early in the story. Lots of things need to happen so there is less room for interstitial content. Lean.

This is part one of a three part micro-plot for our victim. The entirety of which occurs in part one of the overall story. Unless I can find a twist for later.

This introduces the victim in a way that makes us sympathetic to how his death adversely effects Charming. Not the victim—we want him dead. But the animosity between the two can’t be so extreme that any sensible reader or character would think Charming had a hand in his death. That shouldn’t be a question.

At some point I’d like Charming to angrily but innocently say something to the effect of “I’d like to kill that guy.” The sort of thing anyone would say in anger.

Keeping in mind that her character is still orphan-like at this stage she needs to lose the argument. Not by explicitly giving Jun-kata money for the shirts, but arranging to meet him later.

Jun-kata’s hidden goal throughout is that he had entered into business with Charming because of all the girls that throw themselves at him on The Song, she never did. He has a crush on her. He’s angry because he screwed up the t-shirt thing, but he’s not willing to admit to her that he did—or that he doesn’t have the money to fix it. Pride is his problem. Love is his motivator.

By asking her for more money for the shirts he feels like he’s inviting her to a business partnership of sorts. By resisting, she’s doubting his competency. Of course that pisses him off.

Karl’s role in this is to act as representative of The Song at large. Which finds the entire public argument quite distasteful.

The Pit however will act as barometer for the two arguing. As their anger increases the energy of The Pit will increase.

Charming needs to leave this scene flustered and angry at herself for caving. She can never she that Jun-kata has a crush on her. Her flustered state leads to her first bout of dermatographia.

Charming’s cause worsens because this public outburst not only runs contrary to her desire for acceptance, but also because it contributes to the prosecution’s case against her in the murder trial. All previous harmony Charming enjoyed with her fellow Bennies fractures. Evidence of that is in Karl’s behavior.

544 words on day 517