Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

warp and weft

2026-02-21T05:00:18Z

It's not enough to devise a background for my two main characters to have their conflict against.

I have to weave them together. In particular the timelines. The endings work together nicely, since their final happy ending is when the political situation is settled, and they are rewarded.

But several incidents on the way are just them, and no politics. They still have work together, and not as if I had set them up.

grouse

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ah politics

2026-02-10T17:02:18Z

So why is this story so hard to plot?

The heart-rending story of two people forced together by the politics and machinations about them! They do not care who sits on the throne, but they come to care for each other!

I conclude that they do not care about politics, but politics cares about them. Not in the sense that anyone thinks two lowly born characters have any say in how things turn out. (Until the end, hehehehehe. . . ) But in the sense that I will need at least the broad strokes of how things turn out.

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Sorcery And Subtlety

2025-11-12T22:23:08Z

I essayed

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Bait and Switch

2025-10-31T17:45:24Z

I essayed

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juggling things

2025-10-27T04:07:56Z

It's all very well for Aristotle to talk about logical or necessary procession.

Sometimes, you just have a bunch of things happening during a time, and the only temporal requirement is that they fit into it. Visiting a home and not caring when they visit the garden and talk about the labyrinth there.

It does make it hard to slot them all in.

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Where’d He Go?

2025-10-15T00:37:51Z

I essayed

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nailing down the journey

2025-10-10T03:48:57Z

The heroine sits around and thinks, and the writer sits around and thinks about whether there should be more obstacles between her and the meeting with the love interest. The terrible toad was one, and now -- perhaps a bird? I could make a bird a real nuisance and different from the toad.

The dread bird.

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Ah, the terrible toad

2025-10-02T03:24:27Z

The toad is -- well, not dead, since it was never really alive, or (for that matter) a toad.

But the crafty thing is revealing that the heroine is going to suffer quite a lot after her victory.

And here I thought it wasn't even very important in the plot.

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Color By Numbers Series

2025-09-15T21:42:54Z

I essayed

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enter the rival

2025-07-30T04:02:24Z

Ah, discoveries.

There is the leader of the group. There is also at least one rival angling to take over.

Amazing what clarifying the earlier events does.

I think I will have to put in more sightings of the fugitive wizards, just to remind the character that they are the important ones.

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plot, plot, plot

2025-07-25T04:13:05Z

I've got to nail down how many villains are up to shenanigans. And establish what they are doing.

Then, and only then, can I work out how the heroine learns about them before the end.

Even though the story's working its way from her viewpoint.

sigh

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A Brief Note, Considering Characters

2025-06-25T20:20:07Z

I essayed

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The DM Vs. The Writer, and the Railroad

2025-06-24T16:58:04Z

I essayed

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In My Beginning Is My Ending -- I Hope

2025-05-16T20:23:58Z

I essayed

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Coming-of-age Novels In Fantasy

2025-05-05T15:03:16Z

I essay'ed

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juggling two stories

2025-03-08T04:59:49Z

Oh you plot bunnies!

Two very different stories about a character who finds herself in another world. The means by which they are moved differ, the situations they find themselves in differ, their powersets differ, and the reasons they have powers differ. Their enemies differ, and so does the conflict.

This probably means they should have different reactions to arrival, perhaps all the more in that they do not glide over it as a machine that the readers will simply accept as not relevant to the plot. (It is relevant in both cases, though -- the reasons differ.)

Both are going to have metaphysical questions, though. No matter how different I make them.

(And I don't even know if either one is a full story yet.)

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muddling through the draft

2025-03-07T03:26:29Z

Was plugging along on the first draft, and realized that it might be more interesting with another character, the daughter of one I had in the outline. Breezily wrote pages with her --

And realized that she doesn't work. The hero has to be opposed by someone whose expectation is unreasonable, and so the daughter has to go.

I glowered and grumbled, and poked it to figure out where to set up the no-longer-a-mother do what was needed. I realized that after what happened to the hero's mother, I could set up a kind-and-unkind-girls tale.

Which relief lasted until I sat down and had to write it. I still needed to plot out three scenes and put them in.

Ah, well, at least the vague outlines have formed.

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Dealing Out Drama

2025-01-10T02:19:35Z

essayed again

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time passing

2024-12-27T04:48:07Z

The five girls are studying hard, and having some amusements, and trying to devise a project. The big project, the one that proves they can do the job they are studying for.

So how much of the other stuff gets depicted as they pound their heads against the wall? It can't obsess them day and night, or they would be discharged from their studies as crazy. But how much of it is relevant?

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Fairy-Tale Free-For-All

2024-11-14T19:26:43Z

essayed again.

This is doubly my stuff, because it's about how I came to write my story

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essayed again

2024-10-13T00:34:46Z

You Start With What You Start With

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ah changes

2024-07-16T03:54:05Z

I thought the scene where the heroine put down her foot about something to try to protect her would be the midpoint. Except it's not shaping up that way. In part because I introduced another scene which may confuse the matter.

sigh You know, it was one of the first scenes I thought of when I realized the story was too thin.

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back and forth goes the plot shuttle

2024-07-12T03:08:57Z

A character is being a pill.

He might even hail the main character before the manor court through some chicanery. Oh, wonderful, the idea runs off because the main character could do things and learn things through the manor court.

Then a cold gimlet thought looks at the way the character is being a pill and is not happy with it.

Do I have to invent a different reason to get her there? Ah, plotting.

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juggling times and knowledge

2024-07-10T03:47:48Z

Sometimes events dictate their order. This is useful. Because if they do not dictate it, you have to decide it.

This can be annoying. The heroine must learn of a spy and, indeed, be frustrated at the limits it imposes, but that could happen, if not at any time, at a number.

Everything the heroine synthesizes must be planted first, and subtly.

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villains, do your thing

2024-06-14T03:56:51Z

The story is feeling a little weak.

I have ripped off a skeleton with pinch points, and realized that the villains have to act at some point so as to precipitate our heroine's decision to act boldly despite the danger she will bring upon herself.

Since I have already had them burn a man out of house and home, it's going to probably have to be at least beatings and possibly murder. Not more than I have seen in some other children's books, to be sure. . . .

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