Quick Noodle

So I'm breaking for lunch in the middle of a hand laundry session, with half-sorted papers all over the living room floor, and I suddenly have a plot-related thought, which I probably should have had a couple of years ago if I bad been paying attention.

Behemoth 47 opens with the protagonist being shut down about two lines into her debut performance, because the authorities don't like her choice of subject matter. She then (as the thing stands now) spends most of the chapter being questioned and refusing to finger the e-friend who gave her the idea. The thought that just hit me is this: who tipped off the authorities in the first place? Also, why do it that way -- setting off the alarms and evacuating a crowded auditorium -- rather than just pick her up quietly beforehand?

Hmmm. Must think about this some more. I don't think I've ever had a 'mole' character, but this looks as though I need one. And is that the same person who kills off the rare specimen plant aboard the Behemoth by hiding contraband at its roots? There's a character card for a passenger of dubious loyalties, which I was on the verge of dropping; maybe this is where he fits in.

Friday Photo

Sweet Pea In a bed of red and blue flowers near the stadium, March 2005.

Interesting

I found a link to the Gender Genie on Riba Rambles.

Now, my last completed novel-length manuscript had male and female p-o-v characters in alternate chapters. Just for fun, I submitted a thousand words from one chapter of each type. The hero came up male and the heroine female, though not by very wide margins -- 1200:1400 or thereabouts.

I really don't have time to see if the results are reproducible on the other sixteen chapters, and two points don't make a trend, but maybe, just maybe, I'm getting something right.