reason to celebrate

Page: 519
Project: SAO

I'm back on my feet!

1. I cut my nails off! I can type easily and properly (inasmuch as I do) again!

2. I've been writing in SAO! Creating, not editing. Up to 244,316 and I haven't yet started tonight. Furthermore, I've got the juice to intend to finish the chapter and set up the next one and not just throw out a few paragraphs amounting to less than 1000 words. YAY!

3. I've thought about it, compared projects, and decided that I'm just not cut out for plot-driven stories. I can't get into them enough that I feel I'm giving them their fair due, and I'm always at risk of being critically distracted by the whys of a character's actions rather than the whats. I was brainstorming for Fantasy Stew and ran through some plotty ideas, but when it came to a small personal crisis of Reqel's, instead of events actual prose ran through my head. I could see the scene. I could feel it. I was no longer writing an essay. Reqel's cultural hangups are of faaar more interest to me than why the Fire Islanders are trying to invoke Anala again. What Ren would think of getting Anala back is faaaar more appealing than how and why they horded a bunch of redheads. Eryn, Toren, and Riyan's conflicts of interest and how they respond are more interesting than the politics driving said conflicts. I love my mythologies, and I really love my characters... but uuugh, plots. I just can't do a tight hard plot.

Michael Crichton's Next was a really good book, with a really good plot and some really good ideas, but I wouldn't rate it anywhere near my Top Books just because it was plot-driven. The characters were mechanisms and mouthpieces, not breathing souls. SAO, Sinistral--they're all incredibly character-driven, and they're the ones that I can come back to time and time again. Even poD, while featuring an actual plot (okay, yeah, if you can call it that), is mostly to do with the characters. Why I'm stuck now is that I haven't resolved characters' ending. I know how it'll end. I don't know how they'll feel, and why, and how that will affect everyone else, so I'm stuck.