Sometimes with plot you just have to leap. You don't know if will work out until you've done it and by then it might be too late to change it.

But you can't always know in advance. I'd rather take chances and come up with something surprising and fresh than stick to what I already know, but it seems like a high percentages of misses to get a few really good turns.



I believe I can write poetically, but I'm afraid to because it is so damn easy to slip into excess. I mean, straightforward language is perfectly fine in most cases, and that's what I've stuck to until now. I've stuck to forthright plots and language that gets the job done.

So I spent the morning rewriting an entire page looking for the poetic version of it, and sure enough I just can't tell if I'm overdoing it. I mean, I like it. It's what I've always thought writing was, but I've always pulled myself away from it because I felt that simplicity was probably better.

A few metaphors and creative license sentences on this page:

  "acid pangs of regret began to eat away my resolve."
 " The answer was a whirlpool I didn’t dare approach."
 " It was as if she was a distant memory, nothing more than a fleeting contentment, a morning on the beach playing in the waves." 
 "... my resistance crumbled like an abandoned sandcastle at high tide."
 " Moonlight washed the Victorian in shadowless gray, a discarded painting framed by black skies."
 "At the edge of the beach, waves erupted from the darkness of Devil's Hole, a reminder of the oblivion that awaited a misstep."

That kind of thing.... 

I've decided that since "Shadows over Summer House" is a Gothic hard-boiled romance that if I'm ever going to do this kind of purplish writing, this is the right story.