Nothing Left to Say

When I set out on this quest to combine three genres into a single frankensteined project, I thought that it would be equal parts of each. One third subterranean fiction, one third occult detective, and one third romance. All equally represented.

But what it's turning out to be is 70% subterranean (they are underground, after all), 25% occult detective, and 5% romance. Is that bad? I don't know. Probably.

I've reached the point where they're about to go up against the Low Dwellers (carnivorous beasties), and the romantic arc has progressed… barely. They're maybe starting to grow closer, but sparks aren't exactly flying here.

It's an issue of timing. I know that. These things don't just happen over the course of an afternoon. And sure, they're supposed to be in a hurry. But realistically, this trip should have taken more than a day, considering they're down in never explored tunnels. It's not just a quick jaunt down there, or someone would have already mapped those tunnels by now.

But if the trip takes, say, three days, to get down to where they are now, what would they do the whole time? Either they talk, or they don't. Both options are problematic. If they talk, what about? And if not, well,  how god damn awkward.

Have you ever watched a movie where someone asked a question, for instance, and someone starts to answer, and then continues their answer in the next scene, some distance away. Like, did they just walk in silence for twenty minutes before they finished their explanation? I wish I could think of an example. But it happens, I promise. Leave them in the comments if you can think of any.

The point is, conversations have to happen naturally, and it's hard to stretch a natural conversation over days. At some point, you run out of things to talk about. Like me, now.

I also feel like the occult detective angle isn't getting all the attention it deserves. As I'm writing and slowly revealing Nick's backstory, I'm realizing that that story is much more interesting than this one. Like, here is his explanation of the Veil:

"It’s the barrier between here and… the other side. Clingy stuff. See, once you touch it, you carry a piece of it with you. It’s like it never really lets you go. It’s always trying to pull you back. You take a piece of it, but it also takes a piece of you. A part of you never quite makes it back.”

The idea is that you stay connected to the Veil, and so he uses it to find things, by looking through/along it, to see where other things are in this weird clairvoyant/remote viewing sort of way. And the way you get tangled up in the Veil is by crossing over and then crossing back.

Once I finish with this story I'm working on, I kind of want to go back and explore what happened before this story. I could make a whole series of short stories. The Adventures of Nick What's-His-Name. Blackburn? Something like that.

Does that sound fun to you? It sounds fun to me.

I also have an idea about a story… within a story. But I'll save that for later.

I'll see you Friday.