eating and drinking

[marycatelli]

Most of the time eating and drinking is wisely kept off the stage, during a story.

But this time I was plugging along in my outline and realized that I had had something happening that the heroine reacted to, without actually any notion of what she was doing at the time.  Kinda impossible, that, for her to be doing nothing.

So I was poking around with what she might be doing, and noticing that I had her going to bed without mentioning dinner.  The thing being, her first time at the meal in the fortress would certainly have her noticing things.  Not the food, perhaps, but the place where everyone sat, which she would know would be significant.  And, then, that I hadn't had her eat anything in the morning.  Given that I had followed her every step in any situation where she might possibly get some food, that's a gap, especially since she went walking for hours in that morning.

So I had her new hostess send her off to the kitchen to eat.  All the more suitable in that I wanted her to see a burn.

Which seems simple enough in hindsight, but it took quite some time to wrestle it out.  sigh.  Outlines can have weak points; when you blaze a path through the Valley Full Of Cloud, and go back to build a proper trail, some places just are too unstable for a good foundation after all.  Working around that can be fun.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Did you have her using the garderobe? I was reading a friend's book recently where one of the character's actions was described very closely over a period of twenty-four hours (he was blinded and tied up), and thought that was something that should have been covered.

[marycatelli]

Didn't go into that much detail while she walked. She could have stopped by the roadside for the necessity. (The mountains not being Big Rock Candy Mountain, there were no lemonade streams or hens laying soft-boiled eggs.)