Thursday, November 2, 2017

Facing the inevitable plot glitch

I'm a morning person. When I'm in the middle of writing a novel, I must stew over it in my sleep, because I wake up with insights on the plot. This morning, the insight was that I had outlined a major plausibility problem that will have to be fixed.

The problem is as follows: The commune, Hearts are Mountains, faces a major threat on their horizon, the neighboring country of Free White State. FWS was founded during The Fragmentation by idealogues among white supremacist groups and nationalist ultra-conservative Christian groups, who had in commonality a desire to create a "pure" state.  Their territory comprises a good portion of what used to be the Pacific Northwest states in the former US and borders the high desert where the commune resides underground (literally).

One of the main characters, William, works as a border guard for Free White State -- and a spy for Hearts are Mountains.  He appears to be a Native American mix; however, he passes well for white such that living and working in Free White State isn't a problem for him.

Anna (the protagonist) and Daniel (from Hearts are Mountains) visit William for intel. At least that's how I wrote the outline. The problem is that Daniel appears as a black/Native American mix. That's going to get him, maybe the three of them, killed in Free White State. A shortened novel, and not an ending I'd wish to write.

I puzzled over this dilemma this morning and realized: William is an Archetype. Archetypes can teleport! (At least they could over the past four books I'd written about them.) He could teleport to Hearts are Mountains without any of the indoor or outdoor surveillance catching him just by crawling into a shed.

Problem solved!

2 comments:

  1. Greetings from the UK. Good luck to you and your endeavours.

    Thank you. Love love, Andrew. Bye.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think this is an interesting start.
    This is Lanetta

    ReplyDelete

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