Duh! Randomocity . . .

I was working on the treatment for The Harvester of Faces and was wrestling with a plot point.

I wanted my antagonist--Fiona, who is a detective--to meet KC--my protagonist, and the perpetrator of a crime that Fiona is investigating. I'd created this idiotic subplot that brought in all sorts of minor characters and involved all sorts of elaborate plotting and planning, when it occurred to me--KC actually committed the crime Fiona is investigating, so if Fiona is a half-way decent detective she'd want to interview KC as part of her investigation, wouldn't she? Duh!

Realizing that your characters--antagonists or protagonists--aren't complete idiots is a major consideration, when plotting out a story. I realize that now.

Hopefully I'll at least have this thing plotted out over the weekend. I think I'm nearly done with the first draft of the treatment--there will be rewrites, as it's at a page and a half right now and I don't believe a treatment should be over a page. But it helps to know where the story is going and boy! howdy! it sort of underscores and writes out in all caps any problems with the story. It's a helluva lot easier to correct those problems in a treatment than it is when you've already written fifty pages of a novel or a screenplay. I know this from experience. Bitter. Personal. Experience.

This project I'm collaborating on is about to kick into high gear and will need to take priority for a few months, so after I finish this draft of the treatment for The Harvester of Faces it'll have to go on the back burner for now. Which will be good, actually, as I'm sure all sorts of stuff will occur to me in the meantime. And I won't stop working on it entirely--to continue the cooking metaphor, you have to stir the stuff in the pot on the back burner every now and then to keep it from scorching or getting too thick. Working on it will give me a break from this other thing, every now and then.

Anyways, that and football is my weekend. And laundry. Always laundry.