I Sat Amidst the Evil Hypnotist’s Verdant Decorating Scheme

  • by jentheorizing upon the abstract and the unknowable
  • this happens to other people
  • I nearly fell down
  • I know that I shall go mad!
  • recognize these assholes out in the wild

Tune In Next Time Part 54                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I sat amidst the evil hypnotist’s verdant decorating scheme, theorizing upon the abstract and the unknowable, hoping that I would be able to see the green light were it to illuminate.

Minka Stiletto’s low voice purred through the humid air. “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, ‘this happens to other people, not to me’ — but you are wrong. This does happen to you, and it will continue happening until I decide to stop it.”

I heard the faint chuckle under her words and I nearly fell down into the abyss where she would control me completely. If that ever happens, I know that I shall go mad! I could not raise my fingers to plug my ears because my wrists were still bound.

Suddenly, the banyan tree behind Minka sprouted arms. A second later I could discern the outline of a camouflaged shadow warrior, and a second after that it swung its sword and lopped Minka’s head off. Earlier I had been worried about squirrels, but ninjas were the greater threat. I chastised myself for never learning to recognize these assholes out in the wild.

The fountain of blood from Minka’s severed neck painted the plant life a deep red. It was nauseating, but did allow me to locate the blinking green light that signaled my release from the dead hypnotist’s hold.

Now all I had to worry about was the ninja.

 

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Untangling Things

r-avatarSon of Science Novel has been quite a challenge to outline. We know what events kick the plot into motion, and we know how things come to rest at the end. It’s that pesky middle part that’s been giving us trouble. It’s kind of like this:

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For us, plotting a novel is a lot like combing out long, tangled hair. There are many strands, and it takes patience to get them all in order. If we do our work properly, in the end everything will be silky smooth and free of snarls. It helps if you have a technique.

Our technique is the Plot Rainbow, which we’ve talked about before. Working to untangle Son of Science Novel, we’ve been approaching the story from multiple angles, running through it from various characters’ points of view. We make a little bit of progress with each pass, detailing more plot beats and gaining a deeper understanding of our characters and their motivations.

We know that Hortense will arrive at the cat food factory in time to save Godrick from being thrown into the giant pressure cooker so that the two of them can fall, improbably, in love. The trick is making her trip to the industrial zone feel internally motivated. The reader cannot wonder why such a prim, perhaps even prissy woman would darken the door of such a smelly establishment. Her arrival must feel inevitable based on what we already know about her.

Working backwards is often a good way to solve these problems. If you know that, for your plot to work, Hortense MUST visit the cat food factory, and the only reason you can come up with for her to do that is that she just inherited it, then you know that earlier in the story you need to make significant mention of her terminally ill eccentric aunt. (The one with 38 cats.)

Bringing together Hortense and Godrick does involve more than just keeping him from getting cooked. Their romance, however unlikely it seemed at first, must arise from within each of them and feel — after the fact — as natural and inevitable as the cat hair on all their clothes. This is where we really rely on our partnership, by role-playing the coquettish heiress and the plucky workplace safety inspector. The characters’ lives intertwine, braiding together into a unified story.

Having a process, and tools like the plot rainbow, makes it easier to work out the snags. Working through it with a partner also helps, allowing you to hand the comb to someone else who might have a better angle on the trouble spot.

Minka Stiletto’s Office

  • k-avatarfull of arrows like Saint Sebastian
  • raised the banyans
  • but the green light’s not on yet
  • I like perfection
  • a little too organic

Tune In Next Time Part 53                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Minka Stiletto’s office had changed since my last visit. Under a vast glass roof, she inhabited a captive jungle filled with bizarre plants. Mounds of flat stones rose from the centers of several indoor ponds, water cascading over their terraced layers like champagne fountains. They raised the banyans that grew on their summits so the upper branches brushed the roof and the myriad aerial prop roots reached down and down into the mirrorlike surfaces of the ponds. Strange cacti displayed gigantic spines that made them appear full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. A chlorophyl patina imbued every surface with the semblance of an inner emerald glow, which, combined with the pungent scent and humidity, made the space seem a little too organic. I like perfection in my overdone decorating schemes, and Minka had failed to achieve it despite the natural grandeur.

She placed me on a mossy couch and told me I could get up when the green light came on. “When that happens I won’t even try to stop you, but the green light’s not on yet. Or is it?” Her laughter echoed among the banyan roots and fountaining cairns. And I realized, with everything in my surroundings tinted green, a green light would be all but invisible.

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Fred Bound My Wrists

  • by jenattracted by the scent
  • resuscitating a knocked out fighter with a hand job
  • took you for granted
  • the nightmare that keeps on giving
  • ribbons of lavender

Tune In Next Time Part 52                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Fred bound my wrists with ribbons of lavender and silver, at Dr Stiletto’s suggestion. They might look frilly and dainty, but the damn things were too tough for me to tear through, and cut into my skin.

Now that I was harmless, Minka moved close and stared into my eyes. I tried to make them glassy and vacant so that she wouldn’t guess her hold on my psyche had slipped. She smiled and laid her hand against my cheek, a vivid reminder that Minka Stiletto’s affections were the nightmare that keeps on giving. Years of therapy had rid me of the worst of the PTSD, but I could feel the memories crawling out of their dark holes once again to haunt me.

“I took you for granted last time,” she snarled into my ear. “A mistake I will not make again. You will quack like a duck for me whenever you hear a doorbell, and you will be my eager love slave when you hear me snap my fingers.”

She held her hand in front of my face and snapped, and the effect of her hypnotic power on my libido was like resuscitating a knocked out fighter with a hand job, if that’s not too graphic a metaphor.

Minka Stiletto arched one eyebrow at my very visible reaction to her words.

From every tree along the street, squirrels emerged from their hiding places and scurried toward us. Minka explained, “They’re attracted by the scent of your pheromones, darling boy.”

I thought about the sorts of things squirrels liked to eat and shuddered. Luckily for me only certain parts of my mind were under Minka’s control. I could still resist, plot her defeat and my escape from both her clutches and a rodenty fate.

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When Real Life Intrudes…

r-avatar…which it did this week, it’s good to have a partner to rely on. We had to make a couple of road trips, and as always we tried to use that time productively. It worked pretty well.

We’re also playing with index cards to debug the new plot. These aren’t the color-coded, character-specific rainbow cards, but no-shit index cards. By now we have a fairly long list of events that we want to include in the book. So we made a card for each one that we could recall off the tops of our heads and started laying them out in different configurations. It’s a quick way to look at what-ifs, and it’s a great exercise to do together. It just doesn’t work too well in the car.

It’s been a little bit of a challenge to unknot the middle portion of this plot, and it’s taking longer than we’d like. But it’d be much worse to discover these knots by writing our way up to them in prose. And with a partner, at least there’s someone to talk to out on the road.

Not The Ipswich in England

  • k-avatar“The answer is easy,”
  • such a thing as sexually transmitted food poisoning
  • “Such, gentlemen, is my secret.”
  • “I demand satisfaction!”
  • then takes the form of a helicoidal or screw-shaped spiral

Tune In Next Time Part 51                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Not the Ipswich in England, though. The one in Massachusetts. Which was a good thing, because the dinky chopper would never have made a crossing and the directives of Dr Minka Stiletto were irresistible.

And, as it turned out, there wasn’t enough fuel even for the local hop I had to make. Unlike a plane, when a helicopter runs out of gas it doesn’t glide smoothly forward. It lurches and drops rapidly in a steep parabolic arc, which then takes the form of a helicoidal or screw-shaped spiral. The controls do little to influence this trajectory, but with finesse a skillful pilot can bring the craft to ground at a survivably slow rate of descent. My skills and my luck were barely adequate to the challenge, or perhaps the haze of the trance I’d entered upon hearing the implanted phrase kept me sufficiently relaxed to avoid injury.

Wandering the outskirts of Ipswich, Mass, I searched for Minka Stiletto’s clinic. Asking passersby got me only glares and hasty retreats. “I demand satisfaction!” I roared at a leathery fisherman, whose gap-toothed yodel of fright woke me from Dr Stiletto’s clutches for the moment. My clarified thoughts coalesced upon the realization that the foul doctor was known throughout Ipswich, known and feared. But not yet in total control.

“Bravo,” said a silky feminine voice behind me. My blood froze.

“But,” Dr Stiletto continued, “you misapprehend one thing. Yes, they fear me. But also yes, I do have total control. Now follow me. You too, Fred.” As the leathery fisherman fell into step beside me, and we both stumbled in Minka Stiletto’s rose-perfumed wake, she elaborated on her diabolical mastery of this quaint New England seaside town. “Such, gentlemen, is my secret.”

If she divulged any actual secret, I didn’t recall it.

Minka Stiletto raised her eyepatch to study me more closely. The experience made me wonder if there was such a thing as sexually transmitted food poisoning. I tried to hide my revulsion, hoping the fiendish doctor thought me still hypnotized.

“You’ll note that Ipswich, Mass is the cleanest town you’ve ever visited,” she singsonged, “and you might wonder why. Mightn’t you?” Fred nodded avidly, seeming to have a lot invested in learning how this fact could be true of the place he had no doubt lived for many decades. “The answer is easy,” Minka said, laughing. “She who controls the sanitation guilds controls all!”

Her amusement over this proclamation verged on incapacitating, but all the while she kept both eyes glued to me. This would not be my chance to escape. Perhaps if I played along I could learn something important. But would it be worth the risk?

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I Hesitated Too Long

  • by jensuch a large gang of outlaws
  • dragged him backwards
  • The doctor will see you now.
  • looking furtively at me
  • someone to show her love and compassion

Tune In Next Time Part 50                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

I hesitated too long. My chance to bolt for the helicopter disappeared when Oscar took two slinking steps closer and ran his finger along my jaw.

“I’ve never seen such a large gang of outlaws as I saw that night in Pensacola,” he murmured. “The crocodiles ate well.”

His chuckle told me how much he had enjoyed watching those men get eaten. I gulped, wishing I hadn’t let my curiosity get the better of me, wishing I was in the chopper right now, rising high above Oscar and Enzo and Alonzo. The inner workings of the sanitation union were not for the squeamish.

Enzo and Alonzo moved forward on either side of me, and I was sure they were going to pin my arms, but instead they pounced on Oscar and dragged him backwards toward the barber shop, screaming.

Enzo hissed as he passed me, “The doctor will see you now.” He was looking furtively at me as he said it and I had a sinking feeling I knew which doctor he was talking about. “She needs someone to show her love and compassion,” he went on, confirming my suspicion.

As the three of them disappeared into the crowd, Oscar’s cries were suddenly silenced. I shuddered. If there was one person in the world I wanted least to see it was Dr Minka Stiletto, but it seemed I had no choice. That line about love and compassion was the post-hypnotic suggestion she’d implanted during my last “appointment,” and it meant that I was already climbing into the helicopter and charting my flight to Ipswich.

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Reintroducing, For The First Time…

r-avatarAs Son of Science Novel’s plotting continues, one of the things we like to do is pick one character and look at the story through his or her eyes. Especially for the new characters, this is a great way to get acquainted with them and figure out their reasons for choosing certain paths and forming certain allegiances.

For returning characters, we don’t expect the process to show us so much about them. We still do it, for other reasons. This week it turned out that one of our returning characters was sorta-kinda new, too.

This person has a minor part in the Science Novel. It’s not that we didn’t know him, but in this book he’ll be promoted to the POV cast. For that, we need to get to know him better. Looking at the story from his vantage helped us spot many small but important unanswered questions, which now mostly have answers. The issue also applied to the backstory, and for that we used our time-honored technique of going out to dinner as members of our cast. (Kent cheated a little bit this time by not doing the accent.) Mostly when we do that, the characters at the table are romantically involved. For this outing, they were parent and adult child. It was highly illuminating.

Having a writing partner means there’s someone to help out with every phase of the complex process of writing a novel. And, sometimes it means you have someone to take out for dinner.

“You See There Are Three of Us”

  • k-avatarafter tonight there will be four
  • baby, I won’t joke with you
  • check the gun room
  • keeping Enzo from whispering sweet nothings
  • — and those crocodiles

Tune In Next Time Part 49                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“You see there are three of us,” Oscar said, gesturing with his chin at the men flanking me. “After tonight there will be four. You will be called back. Recycled. Pensacola will be remembered.”

“Baby, I won’t joke with you,” I replied. “I can’t come back. Much as I want to.” My only chance was to confuse them. “You know Pensacola couldn’t be helped. Florida dumpsters, man. Alligators.”

“Those were American crocs, you ignoramus!” Oscar hissed.

“I know, sorry. I got confused. You know that’s how I am. Why I forgot to check the gun room before my run that night.”

The other two garbagemen muttered behind me, and I realized I knew them. I had met them in Milan. Oscar glared at Alonzo, keeping Enzo from whispering sweet nothings in his ear. They were becoming distracted, which was what I wanted, but now I had become intrigued. Italian scab sanitation workers posing as union muscle? It couldn’t be a coincidence that the Pensacola debacle was being dredged up after all this time — and those crocodiles…

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Oscar and the Other Two Sanitation Workers

  • by jen“Tell me, Ludovico,”
  • feeling the wind rush by
  • I met the bastard’s eye
  • very drunk
  • a superbly embossed plated coal-scuttle

Tune In Next Time Part 48                              Click Here for Earlier Installments

Oscar and the two other sanitation workers were upon me more quickly than I’d anticipated.

“Tell me, Ludovico,” Oscar said, spitting out my alias with such malevolent force that his stinking breath ruffled my hair, reminding me of feeling the wind rush by during my recent helicopter trip, “tell me again about the Pensacola dumpsters.”

I met the bastard’s eye and had no doubt that he was very drunk. The blue tinge on his lips told me he’d been drinking Barbicide again. That meant he and his cronies had been holed up in the barber shop for a long time, surveilling the church where Jason and Uncle Jinx thought they were safe. Where Lyudmila was now. I fretted for her safety, but tried not to let it show.

A grin split Oscar’s round face, revealing not teeth, but a detailed grill reminiscent of a superbly embossed plated coal-scuttle, inset with emeralds. Bad news for me, because that grill was a symbol of the highest rank in the sanitation workers union. It meant he had the authority to command every garbage man in the city.

I threw a look back over my shoulder, trying to decide if I could make it to the chopper if I sprinted.

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