It's a three part story* and I solidified the path to the end of part one. I knew where I needed to go but didn't know how I would get there. I figured that out last night. I also figured out how to work in a bit of characterization I needed to work in with my main supporting character. I wrote that part before work this morning but I'm afraid it needs to be amped up. There are guns drawn and shots fired. It should be more exciting that it seems to be right now. I need to reread what I wrote, but it seems flat.
I am thinking that I will add one of those WIP bugs on the right side over there in the next few days. To keep me accountable.
Here's another sample from it, with a bit of an explanation of the idea of data running that I'm playing with. Let me know if it doesn't make sense. And keep inmind that these are all first drafts.
As we walk back to Raul’s to get ready for that night’s action we try and stay on the streets that are well lit. The sun in going down and casting long shadows down the asphalt. The buildings are getting taller as we head into downtown and I am explaining what it is that Carroll does.
“It’s called data running,” I say, waiting at a corner for a man pulling a small cart on the back of his bicycle to pass, the orange flag attached to the seat is popping in the breeze. Berger nods like he knows what I am talking about but I know he doesn’t, he can’t.
I lift my left sleeve and show him the port in my arm, just below my elbow.
“You’re on the wire?” Berger asks.
I nod and tell him that I could be. “I’ve got the equipment, but I don’t use it. Not often anyway.”
“So, what does that have to do with Carroll and this job?”
“It’s how they run data.” We turn the corner and pass the restaurant we ate at a few nights before. We hear generators rumble to life. Shop keepers are starting to turn on the lights outside their front doors and little pools of light are beginning to litter the sidewalk. I continue. “They sit a guy in a chair, hook him up to a feed. They dump whatever info that needs to travel securely into a part of the brain that’s not being used and send him off with an address on a page and name of someone to ask for. Once they get to wherever it is they are supposed to go they get hooked back up and the data is pulled out of their heads. All we have to do is make sure they get there.”
* Possibly a novella since we are at 4,000 words now and not done with the first of three parts. We are looking at probably 25,000 to 30,000 words when all is said and done. Plus, it being a novella plays well into something I have been kicking around in the back of my head. More on that if something comes of it. **
** Thanks to Joe Posnanski for this little aside device. SO much easier than trying to work that info into the main post.
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