Finished Deathlock yesterday, caught a cold today.  Gonna spend the weekend on the couch, eating smores and watching “Last Holiday” with Queen Latifah.  I might even muster the energy to go to the library for a wild and crazy browsing extravaganza.  (Yes, that’s my idea of a party.)

But seriously, how awesome is fuzzy blanket + fuzzy kitty + fun book + husband willing to wait on you cuz you’re sick?  It doesn’t get much better.

Back in May, I told you that I’d come to a breakthrough with Deathlock.  Well, I’ve been working almost nonstop on that breakthrough for the past three days, and I’m in the home stretch with an outline to get me through.

I hope to send it out soon to my poor beleaguered friends who said once they might be interested in reading something I wrote.  And then I’ll whip them like an ancient Egyptian slave driver until they proofread it.  Bwaha… ha?

This book is shorter and more streamlined than Frostbite, which makes me wonder if I don’t need to go back and cut things in that story.  I still think the story itself is right but it seems to need a snip here, a tuck there.  I’m going to get on that when this (FINAL!!!!) version of Deathlock has a nice snazzy “The End” stamped on it.

You do realize this is the fifth full rewrite of Deathlock, and I’ve finally hit the right note.  You know that, right?  I finally get to stop feeling like a madwoman.  *joy*

I’ve gotten back on track with Frostbite, and I’m able to overview the plot in my head and pick out the parts that still need polishing, which is a huge step forward. It would help if I’d sit down and finish up the revisions I started, but…

I’ve been distracted by a new version of Deathlock. Through all my revisions I’ve had Alternate Story B, a non-fantasy love story, that’s haunted me as a short story I could do with Deathlock’s main characters after Deathlock Proper is published. But Deathlock Proper just wasn’t coming together at all even with four full versions. And it finally hit me — take Alternate Story B and make it Deathlock Proper — by adding the trappings of the fantasy world and the special circumstances of the characters.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, the more the story came alive in my head. The female lead no longer seemed weak and boring, the action no longer seemed contrived.  And, oddly enough, I’ve been more interested in writing Alternate Story B than Deathlock Proper from the beginning, which means now I get to write the story I wanted to all along.

I’m crossing my fingers but not getting my hopes up.

Oh, wait, there they went. They’re up. *sigh*

So, after discussing things with Alex and Chris (and visiting an interesting site called tvtropes.org, which analyzes every kind of character type and plot trope imaginable), I decided that the female lead in Deathlock is turning out to be a Scrappy or, worse, a Wesley:

A Wesley is created when the writers (or sometimes only one of them) have become attached to a specific character, so they begin writing him/her into more and more of the scripts, giving them more to do, and sometimes making them the proxy voice of the author, all while blithely ignoring the simple truth that they’re the only ones that love their character, because the fans absolutely … hate this character.

Technically, you can’t have a Wesley or Scrappy without fans, but I think I’ve studied enough of what my favorite writers did wrong to realize when I’m treading dangerous waters with a mismatched couple.

You can’t give a powerful guy a useless girlfriend.

*sigh*

So… Deathlock take five, anyone?

I’m going to take my own advice and start working on the overarching plot of the series. It needs to go somewhere, everyone needs a spot, I definitely need to work out who’s going to do what, and it’ll be clearer if I have a good outline.

>_> Now where are those blank notecards?

Still pretty tired of dealing with Frostbite but getting close to willing to edit again. Instead, I’ve been working on Deathlock. Basically all of my free time is spent trying to decide where to go with Deathlock and how the story should play out.

Deathlock is on its fourth incarnation, meaning I wrote almost the entire story last year and threw it completely out. Then I started two other versions, hated them, and started this version, which I might not hate. I think I’ve finally found a few things in the story worth keeping, but I need to settle plot details and… they just aren’t settling at the moment.

I need to do more prep work before actually starting to write. >_> I always get caught by not having enough plot to go with my characters, and I have to go back and do the prep work I should have done in the first place.

I have no idea how I managed to finish Frostbite without it looking like a trained monkey just banged his head on my keyboard.