A minor theme in the original plan for this story was “heroes are chumps.” The example the heroine used to argue this point was executed as the reward for all his good deeds. I saved the world, and all I got was this lousy pyre. Well, a lot has changed since the original plan! (A whole first act went in the trash before getting on the current path.) Due to those changes, Heroine no longer needs to justify not behaving heroically because she’s openly allied with villains and has no illusions about anyone’s inherent goodness (including her own) because she …

I can hardly believe it, but I’m at the end of Act I. I shouldn’t be surprised, since this is roughly consistent with my output when I’ve had 40 hours a week to devote to writing in the past, but I’ve been working 90+ hours a week for other people and writing nothing of my own for so long, I’ve forgotten progress is possible. I wish all this writing time wasn’t at the expense of not being able to pay bills next month, but as the saying goes, every silver lining has a funnel cloud. In response to some unsolicited …

I hit a patch I didn’t want to write. It ended up being only a couple hundred words of transition between connected scenes, but they had a repelling forcefield around them (probably because they’d be better as a scene break, but I’ll figure that out in revisions). While I avoided that for two days, I worked instead on the final two scenes. The End is a long way away, but since the outline stage, the actual writing has provided some details I can carry all the way through the finale. I’m 12% (at most) into writing this monster, so more …

Today I dipped a toe into Fight Scene II, prior to which the heroine acknowledges confronting three skilled soldiers will have a much different outcome vs. three inept bandits, so she would prefer avoidance if at all possible. (It’s not at all possible.) I also got to point out that she was trained from childhood to be a weapon—breakable, disposable, forgettable—but since she’s been on the lam, she’s lost her willingness to die, even if she hasn’t (yet) replaced it with anything particular to live for.