Viva La Productivity

I'm still on my self-imposed grounding from writing, but that doesn't mean I'm not outlining, plottering, and scheminating. In fact, that's the whole point: Take a break from actually writing, take the pressure off, and let myself focus on plot problems and things like that. There's a big difference between outlining, researching, making notes, etc., and writing.

So, today, I spent some time on Cover Me. There were some issues that had been bugging me for a while, and I finally resolved them. One involved an antagonist who is mostly in the background until some later chapters (for those familiar with The Best Man, this is in the same vein). I picked Eddie's brain about a few things, since he's a cop, and our discussion prompted me to make a significant change to the end of chapter 1 (which I will implement after my grounding is over). This not only makes the story more accurate in terms of legalities and police work, it makes the antagonist's presence a bit more sinister and unsettling. Win.

Then I sat down and had a discussion with my main character. Think that sounds crazy? Yeah, it probably is, but consider the source. Anyway, while picking his brain and making some notes, I found out he has two very significant personality traits. Looking back, I can't believe I missed them, but there they are.

After figuring out those traits, two things happened:

1. I now have a legitimate, significant reason for the two main characters to do what they do at the end of chapter 3. (Bet you can't guess what they do...)
2. The development of their relationship has more conflict and a more satisfying resolution.
   

Talking to my characters may mean that I'm completely looney toons, but the end justifies the means. Regardless of my insanity, my characters and their behavior make sense now, which means my story will make sense. Does that make sense? Thought so.

Tomorrow will probably be spent revamping the outline to incorporate all these changes, then going over the completed chapters to see where changes need to be made. At this rate, there's a possibility I'll be lifting my self-imposed grounding sooner than the 15th, but we'll see. It depends on just how much the characters keep me up at night between now and then.

Also, on an amusing note, I was doing some research today relating to broken noses. Why? Because I fully intend to break a character's nose at some point. After looking at some info about different types of breaks, resulting problems, what it feels like, etc., I wanted to see some pics of people with broken noses to get a realistic idea of what that does to someone's face (hey, I'm all for accuracy here).

On to Google Image Search!! I entered a search for "broken noses", and what to my googling eyes should appear around every 10th picture?

Oh, just various incarnations of:
Why did Senor Leto keep showing up on searches for broken nose pics? Because he broke his nose during a concert a few years ago and there were eleventy billion articles about it.

So, the one time I'm doing a Google Image Search and not searching for Leto Candy...I get Leto Candy.

And no, I am not complaining...