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[clarentine]

Hey there, all you clever people, you Masters of the Universe in disguise, you manipulative masterminds. I need to borrow your brains.

I have an antagonist who has a problem. He wants to provoke a neighboring nation (let's call it Ess) into declaring war or something like it, but he doesn't want that provocation traceable to him; he has a king who'd be on his case in a big way if that got out. This antag happens to have control of the standing army in our little city-state, Gee. He also has friends in low places, people who will happily break a few heads just on his say-so. There are plenty of Ess's former citizens living in Gee. They like to hang out together but they don't live in a walled enclave or anything like that. There are also other citizens of other neighboring countries in the city to keep it from being too black and white.

What might you suggest this antag do to provoke the Esses into unwise action, so that the antag has an excuse to counterattack?

*****

(I need a new icon. My default is a cavalier, which was perfect for the time spent working on Cavalier Attitude, but this is a different book and a different protag and I really need something different. Does it tell you something about this rewrite I've undertaken that I'm looking forward to wasting time looking for that icon? *g*)

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Said rewrite - this book is In the Shape of a Man, called Shape for short (because no one in their right mind wants to roll the whole title out unless they have to, even if it is perfect in numerous ways for this book) - is coming along. The hardest thing I had to do was rewrite the first chapter, because there are some fundamental changes in my understanding of this story and they had to be there from the start. Now that I have that first scene, it becomes a matter of analyzing the succeeding scenes with an eye to how well they play with the book's new focus, determining what needs to change, and tweaking here and there until the words are aligned appropriately.

I had to cut a shitload of exposition out of my first scene before I was happy with it. It was important exposition, however, and it's taken me most of three subsequent chapters to get those background details back into the narrative.

In addition to unearthing additional external plot nuggets for my protag to fall over, I've got to go through each scene and make sure the attitude change is correctly reflected. I've discovered that this makes for an extremely tedious and frustrating time. It's difficult to hold the breadth of this story--in both its former and current configurations--in my mind's eye so I can compare and make changes in keeping with the new tone of the story. I think I am going to have to print the damned thing out and resort to pen-and-ink and highlighters to track those changes.

Kill me now, please.

*****

(Don't worry, jmeadows; I'm going to bake those cookies first. You should be able to smell the gingery-lemony-buttery goodness all the way up at your place. *g*)

Comments

[newroticgirl.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Are there citizens of Gee who also reside in Ess? Perhaps plant the seeds of some sort of rioting/protests? Then when the Ess folks get ticked and want to give the Gees the boot, the armies get involved?

[clarentine]

There are citizens of Gee residing in a certain (ghetto, it is to be admitted) part of one of Ess's cities, but outsiders are not permitted elsewhere.