Gutbucket Blues

Today I finished Gutbucket Magic.  And then I rewrote it.  And then I rewrote it again.

I'm still not happy with the story -- it has no snap.  I like the general idea for the ending but I can't figure out how to get there quickly and in a manner that is more surprising.

My general idea is that Grandpa and his sidekick are fighting a thing that is insubstantial, and that radiates sorrow and pain.  You can't punch it.  The sidekick is some sort of blues-inspired magical girl, and wants Grandpa to "sing the blues" because that's naturally how you deal with being depressed.  But Grandpa doesn't wanna -- it's not his style.

So I had an old friend of Grandpa's from World War II appear in a summoning, and they talked, and hugged, and Grandpa explained how they knew each other and realized why the guy was there (because he used to play harmonica during the war, and Grandpa would sing along).  But that wasn't satisfying, it took too long and there were questions like wouldn't this guy pulled straight from a WWII battlefield (apparently) be confused about why Grandpa was so old and where he was?

So I went back and rewrote the beginning to make the danger more obvious, and rewrote the summoning in a more interesting manner, and shortened the appearance of the friend so it didn't drag out.  But that didn't seem to work either.

So I decided to have a mystical blues guitar appear first to explain why this friend was being summoned (without stating it explicitly) so that the guy could just show up and it would be more of a surprise when Grandpa recognized him, and I wouldn't give myself time to explain any of the other stuff or worry about if the guy was confused or anything.

But meh, still doesn't really work.  I think the whole guitar thing is kind of a weird distraction that doesn't need to be there.  I can just have the knowledge transferred magically into the magical girl sidekick's head, and she can explain what needs to be explained before the guy shows up.  Maybe.

Ah well.  I may just have to leave it alone for now and worry about fixing it some other day.

Hopefully I can complete a second story tonight.

In any case, here's my current progress on this writing goal (looking pretty good overall!):

Goal 1 - Write a Grandpa Anarchy Story a Week:

January 2013

Jan 19:  DarkFireDragonNinja  (begun several years ago)
Jan 24:  OmniGen Again  (begun Jan 23)
Jan 25:  Veteran of the Bone Wars  (begun Dec 30)
Jan 29:  Nemesis  (begun Dec 10)

February 2013

Jan 31:  Turncoats (begun Dec 8)
Feb 3:  There Ain't No Justice  (begun Nov 29)
Feb 5:  City of the Monkey God  (begun Nov 26)
Feb 7:  Future Me  (begun Jan 31)

March 2013

Feb 10:  Roll of the Die  (begun Feb 10)
Feb 11:  Trouble Focusing  (begun, Nov 21, in theory)
Feb 19:  Dead Again  (begun Feb 18)
Apr 24:  Most Dangerous  (begun Feb 09)

April 2013

Apr 27:  The Thing in the Suitcase  (begun Feb 16)
June 24:  An Inconvenient Airship
June 25:  Continuity Error
June 27:  The Devil in the Details

May 2013

June 30:  Dark Anarchy
July 1:  Ruse
July 1:  The R Word
Aug 3:  Space Kraken


June 2013

Aug 3:  Triple Aaar!
Aug 4:  Take Me Back to Constantinople
Aug 4:  The Chef that Time Forgot
Aug 5:  The Time of Your Life

July 2013

Aug 6:  Endangered Species
Aug 7:  Anarchy Is Forever
Aug 8:  Brothers and Sisters
Aug 12:  Self-Made Man

Aug 2013

Aug 13:  Hackernaut
Aug 15:  Gutbucket Magic