Oh, #&$*%&@!!!!

I haven't posted a writing update in some time, because the novel-in-progress has pretty much stalled. It's not that I don't know what happens next; instead I've got the story exactly where it needs to be, but I started suspecting a while back that even so, I had made a serious error someplace. Something just didn't seem right with the most recent transition material, and I couldn't put my finger on it, for the life of me.

I finally hit on what I think may be the solution. Basically, what I need to do is an inversion of the old "Refusal of the Call" step in the Campbellian plot structure. I know that this makes no sense without the context, but basically the idea is that King Arthur must send my heroine on another quest, this one being for "all the marbles", but instead of the heroine refusing the call, it is Arthur who refuses to send her. Or something like that.

Tomorrow I get the fun job of seeing just how much of my manuscript I get to file in the circular drawer. But this time I have an answer in mind. I hope.