Bother.

[matt_doyle]

My narrative requires that, at a certain point in Hellion Prince, Damarhis finds a certain individual charming.  Said individual is now doing their level best to charm, and my inner Damarhis is recoiling in a fit of paranoia.  He's not supposed to be this perceptive, dammit.  And if he figures said character out too early, the plot accelerates entirely out of my control into unknown territory where things start happening long before my outline says they are supposed to, and without the full structural support of foreshadowing, worldbuilding, and evolving relationships to contextualize them.  Or, you know, something else happens for roughly 30% of the novel, and I haven't got a bastard clue what that 30% might be.

What do I do?

(Other than sulk, RP, and scribble stories about peacockboys).

Comments

[ankaret]

Oh dear.

At least your characters are talking to you? One of mine just came up with 'oh, and by the way, I wasn't born female' after two hundred and fifty-four pages, which was unexpected.

[matt_doyle]

That would be quite the revelation, yes. No, they're very talkative. I try not to be too superstitious about this sort of thing, but then I write a scene and realize that their actions and dialogue have been providing perfect foreshadowing for this scene since the start of the novel... and *I* didn't consciously know about it.

Downside: I think my character is metagaming by refusing to be charmed.

[ankaret]

Oh, I love getting the 'my back-brain was doing foreshadowing' feeling, and it sounds like a good omen for The Hellion Prince that it's happening. Character metagaming is less good. At least when you've got a room full of players doing that you can back up and shout at them, whereas shouting at the people in your head just gets you funny looks.

It explains why I kept thinking 'No, that's not right either' whenever I tried to work out what her childhood was like, I suppose. And it isn't particularly relevant to the plot of the present book, so there was no reason why it should have come up earlier. I just could have used knowing.

[matt_doyle]

It's definitely a good omen. Now I just need to rewrite and rewrite this one scene until I can find a way to slip a sinister agenda in without him noticing.