Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Comments on Fifth Beginning

In the first copy of the first section of the story mentioned in the Third Beginning (which is now titled Depress Button), I had the following written at the top of the first page.

shrink proof wrapping
depress button
no building permit
organ donation card
charged cards
marketing analyst

As sometimes happens, I ended up with several copies of the story in various stages of completeness on my work computer and home computer . . . mostly on my home computer. Am I the only person who emails myself stories and then adds a bit to them and then emails them back? Anyway, by the time I had spread them out in several different folders and then re-collected them to make an official version, I had fogotten what I had been planning to do with that list.

The depress button bit is obvious. The no building permit obviously mutated a bit. The rest, I'm not sure about. I'm pretty sure that our pair were intended to save themselves from the spider mage by explaining how he can shift his research to the magical equivalent of spam blockting. (1)Or at least that he can claim on paper that's what he's researching. That's the shrink proof wrapping and the marketing analysis. I'm less certain what the organ donation card and charged cards were supposed to represent, other than slight puns.

I've had one beta reader (BR) so far, and she described Sums as feisty. That's not a word that I would have used for a character who I see as a middle-aged accountant with a certain stubborn thoroughness and a dislike for having her time wasted. BR liked the story and that's encouraged me to keep going with it. But so far, that has taken the form of trying to discover different directions that the plot could go. There will be, as mentioned above, spiders. The spam blocker is supposed to fit into there somewhere.

There are two thoughts that keep recurring. One is that I need to know a lot more about spiders and about how magic works in this world. That's one thought. The other is that Charles is about to get treated very badly, and not by Sums. Also that Charles is . . . but that's enough spoilers for now.

(1) Yes, that's an actual spoiler if you're reading Depress Button as a story. I must also warn you that the story does not yet have and ending. Or a middle. Reading it as a story may not be a good idea at this point.

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