Ramblings of a Samurai and his Duct Tape

Wasted effort.. or not

I should be in bed right now. Whatever though, sleep can wait.





I'm taking a pair of "Invalid Item"  courses right now, and for one of them the big focus is on Point of View. I read over both the assignments for that one right before work, and for one of them we need to write out a scene between two people fighting. Once from each person's point of view. I was also busy getting ready for work at the time, so I didn't read the instructions too carefully beyond that initial bit. And that initial bit got me real excited because it fit in quite nicely with a novel idea I thought up this last week. This idea involves two Protagonists, and alternates between their PoV over the course of the book, learning their abilities and fighting demons, until they each realize "Hey, we're on the same side. Wanna hang with me and slice some gaping furrows in that giant demon's belly?"


I spent the drive to work and most of that first hour thinking up an encounter between my two protagonists, and then I got going on how they're going to fight each other, because in my original idea they fight twice, though I found a nice little loophole in my idea where I could add a third fight between the other two. Since I'm standing at a dead table most of that first hour it's plenty of time to figure out the scene, and during it all, at least how my idea was shaping up, I needed at least one more PoV for the Mentors who are each guiding their chosen champion. They each believe they have found the one that can defeat the Big Bad, when it's really both of them together who are going to carve him up.


I get real ambitious and decide I want to at least as an experiment in conjunction with this assignment, write out a whopping four PoV's of this scene, though they're never all four together at the same time except for a very brief portion of battle. So I sketch it out in my handy dandy notebook during my first break.


Female Protagonist PoV: Parts 1-3, 5


Her Mentor/Guardian PoV: Parts 2-5


His Mentor/Guardian PoV: Parts 3-6


Male Protagonist PoV: Parts 2,3,5-7


I was feeling very ambitious. I blame the excitement, of which I can feel a bit creeping back in as I type all this up. Over my other breaks I ended up writing most of Part 1 out, nearly at the transition to Part 2, which would be walking into a building I was describing at the end of part 1. My nearly 9 hours at work were up so I go home, traversing the treacherous snow drifts along the 10 miles of 35 down to my exit, and plop myself here, in front of my comp. I go to look at my assignment instructions, and notice something I didn't before... An emotionally strong scene. Fight is mentioned later in the instructions, but I somehow missed that important part.


The scene I'd developed has little to no emotion in it.


Bah humbug.


I'd lost most of my enthusiasm, and decided I wanted to get mostly mindless and play a video game rather than try to switch gears. I did that for 2+ hours and am now back here, thinking. Yes, thinking does hurt. That's why I endeavor to do as little of it as possible. But still I must give it the occasional college try. Or something approaching those levels.


While it seemed at first that I had wasted a lot of effort on that assignment, I realize now that it was still good for giving me inspiration on continuing the novel idea. I learned a few things about my characters, meeting the female protagonist, Laura, and her Guardian, Kain. I know what kind of weapon she uses and where her powers primarily lie. Or maybe just the powers she finds it easiest to access. Same with my Male Protagonist and his powers/weapon. He still doesn't have a name, though I've met him in passing in my writer's cramp winning short "My Savior"  that I wrote last week. Yeah, his Guardian/mentor is the Savior. I don't have a name for her yet either.





OK, sleep won't wait much longer. Today's moral is that... Y'know, F morals. I'm crawling in my comfy bed. I think everyone can see where I was heading with this. If I can't when I wake up, well there's my next post. Night ya'll. Nanu Nanu