Sometimes you just need to step away from the computer screen.
I’ve been tackling the big fight scene, again; part of it at least is written, now trying to plot the rest of it. Sat down with my notes on what I want in there for bad guys, etc., again, scribbling notes on scratch paper to sort events and “bang! Pow!” type stuff into some kind of order, and, well….
Unfired Chekov’s Gun: Hi there.
Frustrated Writer: *Headdesk. Lots.*
Ooookay.
So. Planning to organize what I have figured out, then throttle – I mean, place that Chekov in the middle of things and see how I can get it to go off.
Because an unfired Chekov is a terrible thing. *Solemn nod.*
In the meantime…
Have a local visitor. Brown anole, a species that – like certain fire ants – showed up in this area by way of ship.
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Good luck! At least this isn’t a solution that is popping in from nowhere and refusing to leave. You don’t have to back plot for it.
And huh. Cute little guy.
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More like a solution that showed up and then didn’t get used. So it ought to. Even, possibly, by some of the bad guys.
(Because there’s more than one set of bad guys. Go figure!)
And heh. Unfortunately for our native green anoles, these guys are supposedly more aggressive. I dunno, they seem to be sharing the space around the house well enough.
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As mentioned above, at least you don’t have to back-plot because that Chekov decided to be fashionably late instead of reminding you that it had been set up and therefore needed to be fired.
But it is frustrating that just when you think you finally have all your ducks lined up, here comes another duck. A totally unrepentant duck. After all, it has been there the whole thing doing its thing, it’s not the duck’s fault you forget it when you started herding the rest of the flock into formation. The duck is utterly unafraid of your muttered threats of violence and/or attempts to roast it with your eyes – it knows that unless you want to do a lot of re-writing you, you have keep it. Stupid, smug duck.
That metaphor kinda took on a life of its own, didn’t it?
Cute lizard. Most of the lizards around my house tend to be little ones – and the sensible ones make sure to stay out of reach of the cats. The frogs have also learned this survival rule.
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Duck soup. Just you wait….
And yes. There are enough local cats, the lizards had better stay clear.
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I live in the South and have relatives in the North and I once had to explain what fire ants are to them. My entire family had to reassure them that I was not pulling their leg before they would believe that there are these little red ants with an incredibly painful bite and we just live with them instead of inflicting a severe case of dead on the whole lot. Never thought I would have to explain something as common as fire ants to anyone over the age of about four. Second weirdest conversation of my life.
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*Snrk* One of mine that ranked about that level was “Hurricane? We’re fine… I know it hit Florida, but not this part of Florida….”
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What was the first?(Morbid curiosity invoked!)
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Found out my grandmother had no idea what zombies are. Attempted to explain the concept to her (she knows little to nothing about fantasy/supernatual creatures in general). Spent several minutes going in circles before deciding it was not worth the headache from banging my head against this particular brick wall and frustratedly agreed that zombies and vampires are the exact same thing.
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Well, actually, depending on which folklore version of vampires you’re looking at – and which zombies – the lines can be a bit blurry.
And then there’s the Kabane of Kabaneri. Those pretty much erase the line completely. Very, very interesting… try not to trip over my bio plotbunnies muttering about organometallic complexes and swarm behavior….
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I had no idea you’d gotten to that. It’s no wonder you haven’t been able to find the time for the scene at the end of chapter 2 of MCO.
Have you ever accidentally done something no one has done before? Like accidentally invent a strategy for amateurs who’ve never sewn before to make patterns that fit from scratch without live models, mannequins, or muslin? I just thought Hiko would be learning something people do in real life. I was inspired to make the 18-year-old version of his reincarnation 6’9.5.” That meant that he’d have to alter a pattern to get it to fit and I didn’t know enough about sewing to write him doing that.
It was my mother who told me that I had invented a method for sewing jeans from scratch when you’re not a pro. You take waist, hip, crotch, thigh, knee, midcalf, and ankle circumference measurements, divide the first two by 4 and the second set by 2. You also take your inseam.
Mark where you mark where you made those width measurements, because you are going to have to make those marks on paper.
This is because you will be making outside leg measurements by adding up the distances between those points. Once you have those, make parallel lines those lengths, mark the points at which you made those width measurements, and, using a compass if necessary, draw lines those lengths fanning out from those points.
To make a long story short, you will have transfer this design to soft paper twice, then stiff, because this draws heavily from two sources: wikiHow and a Rope Dye article describing how to make a pattern from scratch that didn’t say precisely what to do with those width measurements.
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what a cute little 🦎lizard🦎 you have there. 😃
– – – – – – – – – –
on chekov’s weaponry
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if you are planning on making a long running series, you could save the gun for the next book. I can’t say I would mind if you did. 😉
If you will excuse my spoiler-full rant, I honestly find the opposite problem to be worse: failure to foreshadow.
– – – – – – – – – –
warning: spoiler-full rant
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I find fiendfire from the Harry Potter series to be an excellent example of failure to foreshadow. the spell was thrown in near the end of the last book when they needed to destroy a horcrux and the author had thrown their horcrux-destroying weapon away.
the part that makes this so bad for me is that the seventh book had a lot of places where it could have been mentioned and wasn’t.
like in the beginning when they were reading through the evil book of exposition that had knowledge of horcruxes, how to make or break them. fiendfire was not mentioned. Not even as an example of something too dangerous to try. we don’t even know HOW dangerous fiendfire is. we don’t know what it can and cannot burn, nor do we know what it would take to stop it.
The book felt like it was mostly the trio doing nothing of substance while being in a shitty mood.
This failure to foreshadow felt worse since up until the seventh book the series had a strong expectation/reputation for excellent foreshadowing. – the seventh book permanently killed my desire to reread the series.
On the other hand… maybe you shouldn’t foreshadow books in advance? 🤔😅
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I admit I gave up on that series after book 4.
And honestly, there’s no reason this particular Chekov can’t go off more than once. There are a lot of consequences to some of our heroes’ backgrounds. 😉
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