Still rumbling...

But not ready to shed blood, anymore. My nephew's working up my tax return and I may not owe as much as I feared. And I wrote more on RIHC6v2 -- now up to 165 pages, total...about 35K in wordage -- and discovered a flaw in Antony's logic that should be addressed but will be easy to remedy. He got so lost in figuring out how to double-cross his double-crossers, he double-crossed himself...which may work out neatly, since he is overly-confident in his ability to pull off these double-crosses (and I think I used every version of that word possible except the passive...or is it present imperfect? I need to brush up on my grammatical terms).

Hmm -- so now I'm not 100% sure I SHOULD address the logic flaw. It sort of feeds into the confrontation with the Big Boss and shows Antony has a self-centered blind side that could crush him...but which also adds to him having to go for his own Plan B because of the trouble he's gotten Matt into.

Dammit, I wish he'd stop being such a psychotic little sneak and just let me work this out so it makes sense. Who'd have thought a simple little erotic-mystery-suspense story would turn out to need a spreadsheet to keep up with all its twists and turns?

Well...anybody who knows me.

You see, about ten years back I wrote a script called KAZN (the Russian word for revenge). It centers around a young soldier planning to destroy the man responsible for his family's murder. VERY high-concept idea...until I got done with it. The soldier became Russian and had fought in Chenya. His father was a former Russian General who was in a successful business with an American partner but who also had ties to the Russian mob...which was run by a former KGB commander. The soldier sneaks into the country and coldly sets about using the killer's daughter to get to him. Of course, he falls in love with her; that was part of his own character arc...but it didn't stop him from carrying out his plans, like it would in a Hollywood film. And at the end, he commits a cold-blooded murder and waits for the cops to arrive, accepting his fate.

I wrote the script to have the past AND the present inform each other in nearly parallel sequences, so that when an action is taken in the present, you're informed about it by an action from the past...which the present action makes more understandable. If that makes sense. I got pretty experimental on it.

Well...a couple of directors I know who read it liked it. A film editor liked it. My cinematographer buddy liked it. An actor read it and LOVED the lead character's depth and meaning (which I took to mean he didn't really understand the script). But NOT ONE reader liked the script in any way, form or fashion. I got a copy of some coverage done on it and it was BRUTAL -- and so riddled with errors, I got the feeling the reader just skimmed the story and didn't take very good notes. I submitted it to competitions and paid to get coverage back -- and the same thing happened. Readers ripped the script and screwed up on the details they used to work up their synopses. Several times. Even posting it on Triggerstreet brought me a lot of negative reaction.

So I tried to streamline the script and make it clearer -- and it didn't work. I was still in the process of learning that once a story of mine has found itself and laid itself out in a way it wants to, nothing else works. Same for my characters; once they know who they are, they ain't gonna let me shift them one damn bit more than they feel comfortable with. And if I insist on it, they just sit down and refuse to help -- and the story dies on the page.

Which is why I'm still unsure about the "logic flaw" Antony's worked up. It may be deliberate and something he INTENDS to be used against him...not consciously, just his deep down demons offering up the possibility of self-destruction. Which might work.

Hmmm....later.