Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Day 31, April 28, 2010

Today's writing involved one of the fiction writer's favored characters: the oracle. In Joseph Wambaugh's work there was a veteran police sergeant at the Hollywood station who was straightforwardly called The Oracle. In John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series the role of the oracle was played by McGee's best friend, the world renowned economist, Meyer. The protagonist in my story has as his oracle a "cousin by adoption," who's an MIT grad and an entrepreneur who's started a material sciences company. She possesses the kind of specialized skills to help the protagonist solve a needle-in-a-haystack problem.

The advantage of having a soothsayer who's close personally to your protagonist is you not only get the objective information out to the reader, you also get to reveal more of your leading character's personal side, making him more accessible and engaging to the reader.

In a second scene, two antagonists—whom I hope are quite engaging—discover the identity of a real creep; see previous post regarding the attempted sexual assault. Their problem is, how do they let the cops know who the bad guy is without taking the chance they'll give themselves away? And in the final scene written today, a supporting character who is a video game maven sees the future of his business being played out in the real world.

I wrote just over six pages today.

Day 31 of writing my new novel is done.

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