Day 133

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

21 Dec 2016

Atmospheric #portree and its fleet ⛵️

A photo posted by Katrina Wiggins (@kaiedesign) on

New tactic; I’ve been doing research, reading up on theory and coming up with ideas, but not really making progress and generating forward momentum. So, in a dramatic turnabout (for me), I’m going to try stepping away from the keyboard in favour of flipchart paper and pens. Cue fanfare. Yes, I know, how luddite. I may give up on it pretty quickly - never really been my thing - but I’m hoping it triggers some better outcomes. Particularly because I’m now playing with the idea of doing some family time up in the Okanagan between Christmas and New Years, which could be a great relational investment, but also means another week mostly lost.

The latest ideas for the saga of Cole are: What if Cadence expressly identified and explained herself as a ‘ghost’ to Cole? This one comes straight out of Brenna Yovanoff’s brilliant Paper Valentine, where she again manages to do everything I’m failing miserably at. Read it. Love it. Cry with me. Anyways, the advantage to this approach is that Cole has a rational explanation for Cadence’s presence, can be suitably angsty over whether or not to trust her and follow what she says (is she good/evil, good fairy or treacherous antagonist? Who knows?) while setting things up for a twist at the end - oh, wow, Cadence is actually Cole’s former self. And she’s not coming back! Poor Itri; his little buddy’s gone forever! What tragedy! …plus some sort of dramatic irony (potential spoiler alert) with the reality that actual ghosts are the evil at the root of the world.

Although, that could just muck things up royally. Another idea would be to key Cole’s motivation as a desire/longing/drive to understand. She explains this away as acceptable because she’s just investing in admiring the power and goodness etc. of the Tower. But her desire to understand leads her to uncover dark broken mysterious anomalies like the existence and rising violence and frequency of the dream deaths, undermining the Tower system and her own security. Successively looking for a new authority to trust in and find security in exposes the danger and broken dark heart of all the various expansions to her world - Cadence’s naivety (??), Ravel’s mercenary betrayals, Victoire’s essential inefficacy, until she has to turn inward to understand herself and create a new worldview and approach of her own that embraces the dangers and gives her a foundation and a motivation to go out and help others. In some ways, this comes a bit full circle to the origins of this story and could still explore themes, difficult characters and some of the more recent ideas like Cadence as undercover operative pretending to be a dead girl. Or something. So! Time to map it out and see if it actually works!

Wednesday

Start time: 13:45 pm

Abbotsford, BC - home/table

Drinking: red wine

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