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.

The label of Science Fiction

Science fiction: is it fiction about a speculative universe? Must it have a good emphasis on science? Does having the story line in the future count for that appellation? Why does the setting of deep space, or a planet other than Earth, count toward the right to the title of Science Fiction?

I don't really have an answer for each question, and it turns out that I probably wouldn't fill the bill in the amount of science I am including in my story. But I had to get the story line off Earth and into the future to reach escape velocity from my own boundaries about what can happen. It's working. I think. I hope.

Plus, "Science fiction" is the best way for me to describe the genre, if someone asks about my story. And the best manner to avoid going into too much detail about the plot. 

Speaking of plot: Alexa is on the space station, and coming across both mundane and surprising aspects of life inside a bit of metal in the midst of deep vacuum. Wherever humanity is, that's where humanity shows up.

The right balance for violence or the threat of violence

Alexa is now on the space station, having spurned Pearson.

The first scene is in an initial draft. This is a first effort in threatened intentional violence; difficult for me since I am essentially a wimp when it comes to tension and violence in television or the movies. As a kid, I would inevitably run out of the theater whenever Godzilla began wreaking havoc (my, how this dates me) and that tendency continues today. In fact, I put off trying my hand at fiction because of a desire to avoid adding the influence of drama or scary things like violence into my life. I am, truly, a wimp.

There is a fine balance to threats and violence: too little, and the scene is a dud; too much or too graphic for the context, and you lose your reader. I'm hopeful I found a good balance.

A personal note: My half sister, Soraya Edwards, unexpectedly passed away yesterday, at age 19. A strong, diligent, happy young woman -- she would fit the mold of a truly enjoyable heroine in any story. She is deeply mourned.

How much now? What should be later? And still rope in the reader

The emotional tension between Alexa and Pearson is building nicely in this scene.

Now the question is how much now, how much later. How much info to divulge to Alexa now, and later, each step of the way.

How much would a normal person wonder, by now at this point of the story ? IE, Alexa NOT asking would make her appear an idiot, which hopefully she is not.

How much info moves the story on nicely, but avoids spoiling the point?

What kind of response would be logical, and ALSO titillate in what it avoids revealing, roping in the reader to keep turning the pages?

This process appears to consist of writing, then perhaps deleting or cutting and pasting for a later scene. Then writing again in a different direction.