Thinking over things

While walking to & from the tube in my new commute, I've been thinking over the current short story in progress, Piscky's Ascent (the title's growing on me). I now have an idea of the edits I want to make. Here are the questions I asked myself to get there:

So, what is this story about? aka, what do I *want* it to be about?
(My answer is the relationship between 2 people preparing to meet their deaths)

I think that is really the Big Question To Ask. Then, follow on questions from that were:

What would people do in the situation my characters are in?
Can I see my characters demonstrating those thoughts/actions?

Maybe I'll work on those edits today, since it is my writing night. (But I'm not going to start writing until I've had dinner because I just.cannot.concentrate on an empty stomach!!)

I've also been musing on In Finding, and its plotpoints (heartbeats). Funny how much stuff you need to unravel and knit together when writing a novel, no? Not only making sure all the threads get screentime but that as my character juggles those things, she is also developing as a character -- getting the tools & prompts, making choices, facing up to her challenges. All the while being consistent.

It did mean that when I sat down with the story in the weekend, I had to delete a scene I'd already written and do it again! Gah. So I'm still on the same word count. One step forward, one step back, it feels like! A while ago I told myself not to get hung up on word count, but yanno... it's hard not to. It's such a concrete measure of progress when everything else is so impalpable -- it's kind of hard to measure "story solidity & consistency" or "level of informed research" or even just "knowledge of this story"!