Convenient Rock Outcropping on a Space Station?

I am crafting my first conflict scene that requires specific physical placements for people and things. In this situation, Alexa finds she must offer something of value (which also happens to be important to her emotionally) to convince the current bad guy to not carry out his threatened dastardly deed, i.e. truly and deeply damage her friend.

But, why doesn't the bad guy just shoot her, and take what he wants? If I was that bad guy, that's what I would do. It's the simplest, most straight-forward manner in which to accomplish the assigned goal.

Thus, for the first time I find the need to map out physical protection for Alexa, that also logically allows for the swapping of said item for said friend. A rock outcropping would do nicely, except they're on a space station where such an outcropping, at best, would be restricted to some very public garden.

I will default to convenient corners in a remote corridor.

Once I have the hallways mapped out for ingress and egress for all parties, the timing of the comings and goings becomes very important.

Plot line: Alexa and her friend blithely stumble along into some unprotected area of the station. Her friend is captured and held hostage for the item in Alexa's possession. Alexa convinces the bad guy to -- instead of really, really hurting her friend -- accept something much prettier and shinier.

But, why doesn't the bad guy just shoot her, after she's made the bauble available to him? That's what I would do as a bad guy, so I could further search for the item I have been instructed to collect, and probably would only get paid or avoid punishment if I deliver it back to the client.

Solving this is an area where I'm more conversant: Alexa is saved by some appropriate person, carrying their own hand weapon to ward off the logical shoot and run situation. Of course, logic becomes more and more important each time Alexa's tuckus is saved by the timely arrival of some savior.

I'm still working on this part of the plot.

I will probably end up with some big piece of paper (or my white board), drawing lines and arrows, and Xs and Ys, that would look like football strategies being planned in a half-time locker room meeting.

Do you think a football game will ever be played on a space station? Probably just about as likely as a rock outcropping showing up.

Avoiding an Idiot Protagonist

So. I'm clicking along on the computer keys, feeling like I've got a pretty good wind at my back (to mix metaphors), and the sound track in my head screeches like a needle across a vinyl record (even more metaphors, and ancient, at that).

Argh! The fabulous interchange I just honed results in Alexa, my main protagonist, figuring out more about what's happening than is appropriate for her at this point. Way more.

I could just have her slide over this little nugget of logic in the conversation. But then, she'd have to be an idiot. An idiot protagonist is not a terrible thing. It's just not this story.

Therefore, I'm faced with:
1. radically modifying this interchange between Alexa and Newcastle, to avoid her getting to this point; or
2. allowing her the bit of knowledge, and gamely writing on to just see where this takes me

Don't know what I will do. This will probably take a day or two of working through the ramifications. Maybe I should find some mindless busy work-type of project for my hands, which often produces a few nice insights and vignettes for the story in my head.

Actually, this may take a more than one mindless project. Oy.

How the heck to make "Enlightenment" engaging?

The title of this blog starts with the word "Enlightenment."

But I, as of yet, have not really referred to that concept, or even something related to that concept. I have, instead, been concentrating on the more traditional aspects of adventure fiction.

In the story, Alexa was brought up in a family that understood and valued the concept and the experience of growing in that direction. But at age 16, she lost her mother to a fast-acting cancer and just six months later she lost her father to a freak storm that capsized his boat in the Caribbean. The daily activities within this lifestyle continued for her, as much as they could considering she was no longer living within a supportive cocoon. But even for children whose lives have not been so catastrophically altered, it is not uncommon for them to develop a certain amount of rejection of all that goes with a concious growth toward Enlightenment.

Thus, in this first part of the trilogy, Alexa meditates, because it generally feels good -- or at least, not bad. And it certainly helps with handling the stress of her life.

But the bliss she remembers from her years before losing her parents hasn't been available since that loss. So, an unconscious yearning for that bliss is the basis for the Numero Uno story line.

Searching for a story about the growth of consciousness is, actually, the very reason I decided to try my hand at fiction. I just can't find what I'd like to read.

I realize there is probably a very good reason for this. It ain't easy to write engagingly about such a quiet and intimate experience and process -- particularly within an Adventure.

But I persevere: inserting small references along the way, moving that story line along with the adventure part and trying to keep them relevant to each other. All the while trying to avoid off-putting jargon.

For Alexa, at first the silence that once was so available, and has been so NOT available for so long, is missed. Incrementally, as she draws closer and closer to the climax, she begins to find herself and her depths more easily, step by step.

Which, is pretty much how I experience life. No surprise I'm writing about it, eh?

Into the Fire

Alexa, the heroine of my story, may have thought life on the space cruiser was like a frying pan. But that was nothing compared with how things are shaping up for her on the space station above Earth.

To keep the reader's interest, it makes sense to me to ramp up the action -- or suspense, in that kind of story -- as you near the climax, which will take place on Earth in this instance.

Before Alexa gets off this station, she will be running -- maybe while floating -- for her life. 
She has pinballed from one suitor, to a bad guy, to a bad guy masquerading as a suitor, to yet another suitor. Or is he also a bad guy? That's not clear to her yet. (I know who/what he is, but she will still be wondering at moments even in the third part of this trilogy.)

I have a general plan for her on the station, with some details I'd like to include. It is delightful to see how including a detail at one point sometimes sets up another detail -- previously thought to be unrelated -- at a later time in the story.

It really does feel like the story seems to be writing itself, almost. So different from reporting on the movement of equities or the fine points of the latest corporate tax law.

More like in the Flow, than into the Fire.