Saturday, December 23, 2006

When You Know How the Plot Goes

Today on For Better or For Worse, the action was purely focussed on Deanna getting the kids out of the burning building, so my plan of continuing to narrate the action through Mike would not work. I summarized and hinted broadly that Deanna should say what happened. aprilp_katje did not pick up on this, or she did and decided not to do it. I don’t know.

The rest of what I wrote was dealing with the advanced notice of the January monthly letters. As I discussed yesterday, I had misread dialogue interpreting that Constable Paul Wright would be coming to Milborough over Christmas, so I had to retcon that back to the current scheme. The January monthly said that Grandpa Jim and Iris would not be joining the Patterson family for Christmas at their own choice, but I know plotwise, having Grandpa Jim there would mean a mixed focus between Mike’s disaster and Grandpa’s stroke and so Grandpa was removed to avoid the conflict in plotting. It is a cheap way out, and a more powerful storywriter would find a way to work both of them in together. However, I took advantage of it by having Constable Paul Wright appalled that a beloved mishomis (grandfather) would be excluded. Then I generally snarked other aspects of the Mtigwaki trip setup. It made for a very long Constable post.

Then Howard Bunt told the story of the fire through the perspective of the Kelpfroths. After seeing tomorrow’s strip, I will bet we will not see them in this strip sequence except by someone mentioning it was all their fault the fire occurred. The set of circumstances described in the monthly letter with nylon curtains and plastic lamp shades and napkin-filled soup bowls was so over the top, I felt the need to turn it into a conspiracy. It was too ridiculous otherwise. The implication is that Melville was drinking and smoking in bed, extinguished his cigar into a napkin-filled soup bowl, and then after the tacky furnishings were set on fire managed to make it from the bedroom into the alcove before passing out from the smoke.

Tomorrow’s strip:
Selfish Pattersons all around who don’t care for each other, but cares about material things. Deanna cares about her photography books, Mike cares about his laptop, Merrie cares that the fire is going to burn everything. No one seems concerned about Mike’s condition, except the firefighters. Not even Mike.

4 Comments:

Blogger April Patterson said...

I summarized and hinted broadly that Deanna should say what happened. aprilp_katje did not pick up on this, or she did and decided not to do it. I don’t know.

I did consider a Dee-mail giving her perspective, but I'd done that so recently with the plumbing arc, I was afraid it would be too similar, plus she wouldn't have been privvy to the firefighter's thought bubble. Well, unless she read the bubble, as I've done so many times, but I wanted to do something different. I'd considered having April find his comment somewhere online, but I'd done that already with the plumber. Hence the firefighter being acquainted with Jeremy's mother. :)

6:09 AM  
Blogger howard said...

Ah! How foolish of me to actually say the continuity goddess would not pick up on something. I should have known better. Please forgive me, continuity goddess. It won't happen again.

Your humble servant

7:04 AM  
Blogger April Patterson said...

Aw, shucks. :)

Tomorrow's strip is Michael-centric. If you don't object, I will leave this to you for a late-night Michael dispatch, rather than pre-writing today.

4:19 PM  
Blogger howard said...

Okay-dokey. Any hints as to what it is about?

7:45 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home