Rewriting the Remembrance, from 7 November.

Okay, stop. This is all dialogue. They’re makin’ with the talky-talky. There’s no action, well, very little action, and most of this chapter has been and will be exposition. We need more action.

I like the conversation as-is, though and I don’t want to cut it (yet). I need to have the conversation interrupted by the arrival of the man who will become the Squirrel King. The Green will insist that Diane let go of her hold on the roots, so that they can do their job. She’ll take to the air in an effort to locate him, and Tim will search him out on the ground.

Tim will confront him, knock him to the ground, and start grilling him about why he’s been following him and his caravan since they came into the city.

“That flicker out of the corner of my eye that disappeared as soon as I noticed it, that was you! You distracted Devion when we were coming up on the grasses, too! Admit it!”

Diane’s going to get worried as Tim loses his cool. Then they’ll both get buffeted back by the wings of a green dragon who grabs the would-be Squirrel King in its claws and carries him off into the forest, but not before granting the caravans’ safe passage through her realm on their way east.

She should send along a message to Detroit. Something like “Come and find me, I’ll be waiting for you.” That will set up his later return, and traumatic discovery.

Also, the Green bringing the soon-to-be Squirrel King into the heart of the forest will be the mistake that allows him to wrest control of it away from her. If she wouldn’t have done that, he would have never gotten past the roots. Also, any punishment she enacts will be seen as justification for his later treatment of her. He won’t have done these things just for kicks any more, but to hurt her as she hurt him.

If it’s this easy to write about what I want to write, why is it such a pain in the ass to actually get it down? Why does the writing feel so forced when the stuff behind it feels solid, reasoned, and worked out?

Nikki said she could tell that Diane’s scenes in the beginning of Chapter 2 were hard for me to write. No doubt the same will be evident here. That means I’ll need to do an editing sweep after I add the new material in, to improve the flow and massage out that hard-to-write feeling, assuming that I can properly identify it.

Is having Nikki edit with a limited number of passes increasing the pressure to get it right the first time, and removing the permission I’ve given myself to write crap? I don’t think so, but even if it was, giving it a pass myself before I hand it off to her will mitigate that.