One of the things that happens as I work on a final draft is making notes about the little stuff, like Button pushing her glasses up her nose in Act One and Two and then not again. It’s not major rewrite, just making sure that I hit everything I’ve set up, repeat motifs, that sort of thing. So I use sticky notes on my desktop (all virtual) and at the end, where I am now, I go back and try to make sense of them. Most of the time, I can, but there are always a few puzzlers. So in the interests of getting a Monday blog post up here, here are some of the notes I’ll be processing this afternoon. I’ll be finding them stuck all over the place and on pieces of paper strewn through out the house, but for now it’s this. Talk about whatever you want in the comments. Have a nice Monday!
Cold
Move Max and Daphne to Act 3
Mammon asks Max leading questions about Nick in diner
Hit the giant sloths twice more.
Talk to Astoria.
Astoria confesses, Act 2
Nita can see green with scupper
Stripe needs a personality
We’re still bitter about those sloths.
Moloch in Act 2
More Joyce
Spooky
Binky, Dorothy gets new bear
Brilliant idea
Frank
Jeo/Daphne as doomed
Marvella, Jason’s Mom
Max/Button: Make Lilith suffer
Nita/Nick romance, physical, on the page
Asshat, iffy
The DA in Act One and Two
Belia saves the mutts at the hellhound breeder
Antidote in Act 3
Mayor in Act 2
Mention Grandmas
Nick
Where’s Vinnie?
Dom in Act Two, Demon Island Daily
Poodles
Hit Joyce harder.
Breakfast Act Three, food specific
Socks: Cthulhu?
Marvella needs an edge, foreshadow the crazy
Team arc; Cthulhu
Do a three beat for Cecily, Dorothy, Astoria
Earth wants its giant sloths back
Now I really want to know about the sloths!
So do I! Where have they gone? Will they be okay? Will Earth get them back?
From Wikipedia:
“. . . the giant ground sloth flourished until about 10,500 radiocarbon years BP (8,500 BCE). Most cite the appearance of an expanding population of human hunters as the cause of its extinction.”
But as we know, it was Beelzebub’s fault.
Beth, so do I. LOL
I think my favorite was “Socks: Cthulhu?”
What do you get for the all powerful destructive demon who has it all?
Except feet. He (it?) doesn’t have feet.
Heh. I was picturing them on the tentacles.
My Monday is summed up by “Asshat, iffy.”
My fav is “Brilliant Idea.” Did you have a good idea? Did a character? Did you have one or do you need to come up with one? The possibilities are many and varied. 🙂
This reminds me of when I find a note in my office with just a phone number. I used to call and quickly hang up, and then they created call display, and now I’m too embarrassed to do that.
That’s Rab. He has brilliant ideas that tend to backfire and then work out, like bringing scupper to Earth. I had two instances so I need a third.
That comment brought to mind the use of “cunning plan” in Blackadder.
I’m always finding notes to myself that I either can’t decipher (horrible handwriting, thank you computers) or that don’t make sense. I feel way better now.
Well hello. Two weeks at my new job and my brain is exploding. So much paperwork. It’s archaic in the age of computers. 350 students times 10-15 pieces of paper each. I’m going to have a TALK with management about dragging ourselves into the 21st century.
Anyway, that’s why I’ve been missing. Exploded brain needs only sleep.
And I bought a car.
Many miles of merry driving, Kate.
Good luck!
Over the last 20+ years I have spent just a little of my own money for things the power plant needed which we could get if only we could wait six months (or more.) That included a whiteboard and two cork boards and a fist-full of expo markers. Before I left on Saturday, I did a little house cleaning.
The cow-orker tasked with procurement of supplies has a habit of using a pushpin to put purchase orders and receipts all over the cork boards. I gathered them up and stuck them in a file folder, then sent him an email to let him know where they were. Some of that crap was from 2015, so I don’t think he cared.
There were torn pieces of paper with phone numbers push-pinned to the boards. If they were current numbers for anyone we might call, I typed them up using a 24pt font and printed them back out, then put the numbers in our telephone binder, where such numbers belong.
There were equipment status reminders written on the white board… months old. If you deal with whiteboards at all, you know they must be erased or the writing becomes permanent. As with the phone numbers, I typed up all the notes, printed and pinned them to cork. I located the dry-erase fluid and cleaned the white board completely.
In other words, I titivated.
Your notes reminded me of that. I’m picturing post-its and scaps of paper and 3×5 cards all over the cork boards and various colors of ink on the white board.
Best of luck!
I write notes on my upper thigh with a sharpie. My shorts hide it and every time I pee I’m reminded. I lose notes. I can never get a tatoo. If I’m ever in an accident I ‘m not worried about my underwear, my todo list however…
My notes would reach my ankles at this point.
Still, that’s a good system. Except for the Sharpie. That stuff has to wear off.
LOL! That’s hilarious! I love it.
With my thighs I could probably write a complete novel.
Susan E. Phillips wrote books containing, either as lead or side character, Dr. Jane Darlington, who absent-mindedly leaves notes scribbled everywhere, including her baby’s diapers… and arms, and legs, and feet. Thigh writers sound like her. You must be geniuses, too.
How do the Sloths feel about being hit – twice?? I would think they would be the ones to be bitter. Or gang up with Joyce to protest being hit. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s more air time really, but this is what came to mind.
“Stripe needs a personality” is my favorite though. I could say this about a fair number of fictional characters I have read about over the years, sadly, many of them supposedly heroines. At least Stripe has a good chance of actually GETTING a personality, in your hands.
I was taking some food to the Humane Society shelter today to donate, and explaining to the receptionist about my cat’s finicky appetite. (Well, actually — no shit, Sherlock.)
But she topped my stories with one about a cat she’d fostered who had kidney disease, and foodwise, the way it manifested was somehow that he refused to eat any dry food that wasn’t triangular. Any other shapes in the dry food mixes he would pick up and spit out to the side of the dish, and go rooting around for the triangles.
So my story was well and truly topped.
I usually have actual post-its with random letters/numbers and wonder, “What the hell is this password for???”
“Hit Joyce harder” sounds a little violent… But I think she’d be hitting back.
Learnings for life. All you need is an image of nature and an italics typeface I tried to make haiku but it wasn’t happening.
Mention Grandmas. Hell yes we should, and not as a stand in for old fashioned prudish attitudes.
My grandma taught my 3-year-old brother that bras were called titty hangers. I don’t think she was prudish!
Yay for more Joyce!
Also, you all may like this http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/190909.html It is the Anatomy of Terry Pratchett done by Dave Kellett. He has a whole series of author’s anatomies which you can read for free on that site and if you wish, sponsor the publication of in a book at his Kickstarter which I’ll link to in my reply to myself so the posts make it through.
Kickstarter link https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/anatomy-of-authors
What I love is all those notes sound like “last minute check” notes. It sounds like the beta read is near. Do you need another beta reader? I would love to.
Just an admin note: this post, and the subsequent one, did not show up for me on refresh until Thursday morning. The weirdness continues.
Wow. Good Book Thursday didn’t show up for me at all today.
Mollie’s on it, but this is awful. Thanks for the note!