DrabbleWriMo 16: Fantasy
17 November 2021 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI've been looking ahead and trying to do the planning that is so desperately needed, and in fact it looks as if the problem is *not* going to be squeezing fifteen prompts into a quarter of the book's plot; the problem is going to be fitting the remaining quarter of the book's plot into the small number of applicable prompts :-(
What on earth am I going to do with 'umbrella', 'herb', and 'medicine'? The latter could *just* about apply to the restorative that Marthe reluctantly gives the Comte de Brencourt on his collapse, but that confrontation cannot possibly occur as late as Day 26, for the simple reason that there wouldn't be any room to speak of for any of the rest of the plot afterwards. I can't see umbrellas making any sense anywhere outside Paris. Of course Louis-Philippe, the Bourgeois King, was known for his umbrella...
(Parisian umbrellas circa 1815 -- a good fifteen years later. Currently, Bonaparte has only just become First Consul, never mind meeting his Waterloo!)
English umbrellas, Gillray 1782
But I'm having trouble thinking of any metaphorical umbrellas in the plot either (part of the trouble being that it really isn't a metaphor I can see coming naturally to any of the characters in this setting -- even though the OED cites figurative usage as early as the 17th century: Those brainsick fooles as... made Religion an Umbrella to impiety).
The most sensible thing to do would seem to be to start from the end and work backwards through the prompts, trying to work out how to fit them into the skeleton of the plot. But at that point I got stuck on 'medicine', and still cannot see how I'm going to fit any of the safeconduct business in; I'd have liked to do more of de Brencourt's PoV for the bits the author only implies in retrospect and in passing -- his attempts to find someone else to undertake the mission to La Vergne, for example, and his feelings towards both Gaston and Valentine in the final chapters -- but I'm obviously not going to have any potential space to spare for that :-(
And having now run out of time and come up with no alternative ideas, I am constrained to put 'fantasy' literally onto the same page as the preceding prompt, to be followed by 'hearth' and 'still' both within the same preliminary chapter -- prompts 14–18 used in the space of less than 20 pages of text. (I was tempted to leave out the episode of the hiding-place, since it is so minor in terms of plot consequences, but I couldn't come up with anything better further on to use the prompt 'hearth' for, and I need to write something or other tonight, so I'm stuck with the small section I had pre-planned!)
I am, however, still making slow progress with Hertha's graveyard scene during my travel and lunch hours ;-)
What on earth am I going to do with 'umbrella', 'herb', and 'medicine'? The latter could *just* about apply to the restorative that Marthe reluctantly gives the Comte de Brencourt on his collapse, but that confrontation cannot possibly occur as late as Day 26, for the simple reason that there wouldn't be any room to speak of for any of the rest of the plot afterwards. I can't see umbrellas making any sense anywhere outside Paris. Of course Louis-Philippe, the Bourgeois King, was known for his umbrella...
(Parisian umbrellas circa 1815 -- a good fifteen years later. Currently, Bonaparte has only just become First Consul, never mind meeting his Waterloo!)
English umbrellas, Gillray 1782
But I'm having trouble thinking of any metaphorical umbrellas in the plot either (part of the trouble being that it really isn't a metaphor I can see coming naturally to any of the characters in this setting -- even though the OED cites figurative usage as early as the 17th century: Those brainsick fooles as... made Religion an Umbrella to impiety).
The most sensible thing to do would seem to be to start from the end and work backwards through the prompts, trying to work out how to fit them into the skeleton of the plot. But at that point I got stuck on 'medicine', and still cannot see how I'm going to fit any of the safeconduct business in; I'd have liked to do more of de Brencourt's PoV for the bits the author only implies in retrospect and in passing -- his attempts to find someone else to undertake the mission to La Vergne, for example, and his feelings towards both Gaston and Valentine in the final chapters -- but I'm obviously not going to have any potential space to spare for that :-(
And having now run out of time and come up with no alternative ideas, I am constrained to put 'fantasy' literally onto the same page as the preceding prompt, to be followed by 'hearth' and 'still' both within the same preliminary chapter -- prompts 14–18 used in the space of less than 20 pages of text. (I was tempted to leave out the episode of the hiding-place, since it is so minor in terms of plot consequences, but I couldn't come up with anything better further on to use the prompt 'hearth' for, and I need to write something or other tonight, so I'm stuck with the small section I had pre-planned!)
I am, however, still making slow progress with Hertha's graveyard scene during my travel and lunch hours ;-)
She would have picked her husband another flower and tried to laugh off the omen, but he would not hear of it. Each petal was salvaged gently from the sand, kissed, and put away. Then Valentine came into his arms.
"It was worth it," she whispered, muffled. "All those years for the happiness we have had in this hour. Only I wish I could die, now, and not see it pass..."
His voice was low. "I have a dream that this place, this hour shall hold us always, in life and in death."
The yellow poppies glimmered at their feet.
