OW.

[kaigou]

Have you ever been sitting around, waiting for a download to finish or some other chore about as exciting as watching paint dry, and thinking about a story and the big cliche in the middle of it that you've never been able to figure out a way around because then you'd deconstruct the story too far, but you couldn't come up with something to replace that facet of the plotline? And then while staring blindly at nothing in particular, an image of a book cover or a CD or maybe one of those stupid click-through ads on the 'net catches your eye and suddenly you think, oh my freaking DOG that's it!

No?

Okay, me neither.

But I think I just came awfully close.




[Two words: PONY. EXPRESS.]

Comments

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I do that, but I find I end up muddled around and making it worse in my head: it's like I can't always keep the entire picture in my head, that way. (Especially when I'm trying to juggle sub-plots.)

The biggest issues for me right now are the parts in my writing where I can see I'm tapping facets that are quickly becoming (or have been, for awhile?) cliches in the UF genre: the thief, the street hooligan, the bartender, the slumlord. There are other career opportunities in a city, and I just need to find the right ones... though I do think a pickpocket's skill is a rare and dying breed, these days -- but that's not at all the same as a house-breaker.

[kdorian.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm fortunate in that the one character I need to focus on has an 'unusual' skill; his job is to distract the mark after the pickpocketing, to give the dip time to get away clean. He's also trying to learn how to bump locks, because he knows he can't get away with that forever, with a face as distinctive as his is.