just an update ~

Day Sixteen: Goodie Proctor's got my Poppet
character building and endlessly more reseach.

i hoped i would find more uses for Mr. Mad, but he's not around as much as i thought he would be. meanwhile, Mr. Ew and Mr. Pebblehead are looking to be chatty regulars. i feel comfortable talking about Mr. NastyOwlFace, but i'm not sure yet how i feel about actually depicting him in a scene (or the drunk for that matter).

Mr. Eck now has a friend I'm nicknaming Scully but i don't think i'll use either of them as much as i had originally planned. Mr. Bing, Mr. Burn, and Mr. (oh heck, I can't remember the third guy's name: we'll call him Mr. Dolt) seem like they'll get lots of play and i'm adding to that unholy trio Mr. Auggie and Mr. Pew as commentators/chorus types.

and speaking of holy, Father Mitty joins the cast (for at least three scenes worth noting), and it's clear to me that i can't not include Looey. i don't want to include Looey because he annoys me, but it may be worth it to include him just to have someone say: That Looey is such an annoyance. i was up until midnight reading Looey's whining. that man could go on!

still no word on Mr. Hanty's letterbooks. i'm starting to get nervous.

i also reread Mr. Poppet's memoirs ~ refreshed my mind on some of his more harrowing descriptions of his experience in the war. i think i have a good handle on his personality even though i still don't know much about him. the burning question for me at the moment is: who paid his bill? the government? did he do the work pro bono? far as i know he was already mustered out of the army and a private citizen again. i'd reeeally love to know (and if i can't find out, i'm totally writing a great scene about it anyway).

the outline is sorta half-formed. it still needs a lot of work, but innerliberry loan is dragging on the materials, so i may have to leap without a lifeline and worry about resolving the chronology later. i don't want to just stall here.

and still no inkling of an idea for a title. but i haven't read Mr. Poppet's closing more carefully since i last said i would (to see if something in it strikes me).

oh, and my newspaper guy, Gat (the names are getting weaker by the character here) was very nearly cut from the story until i actually sat down and read his personal account. he is a deliciously victorian (i.e. purpler than a eggplant) writer. his descriptions of the proceedings are almost hilarious (man, those guys must have been bored out of their gourds day after day with nothing to do but sit in the interminable heat and listen to the likes of Mr. Dolt go on and on). journalistically it's about as unobjective as an el-jay rant, but the colors shine ~ so out of respect for the delightful rendering he made for the sake of posterity, i am putting him back into the story and will likely be stealing liberally from his work.

lucky for me, he wrote some other pertinent sketchbooks from which i'm hoping to extract logistical information about Willards and the like. oops, i guess that means more reading.

my newsman Gat (on the left, i believe),
hanging out with mark twain circa 1871.

titles ~

i picked through Mr. Poppet's oratory. man, that thing is a mouthful ~ you'd have to be stone-hearted not to think twice after hearing that. i recognize that the logic is flawed and that it's primarily an emotional appeal, but dang he sticks it to the jury but good.

anyway, the point was to look for a title, but the language doesn't lend itself much to titles. these were the phrases that most suggested themselves:

Overcome by Destiny (meh ~ too vague)
The Gracious Lick of a Friendly Dog (i actually like this one, but it's kinda long)
Subtle Eastern Poison (love the concept, but it doesn't seem to work)
Toy of Fortune (too...something ~ the word "toy" sticks in my craw)
The Four Schools (i like this one too, but it's kinda narrow in its scope)
Bitter Witnesses (apropos, but generic)
A Few of the Five Millions (i love this as a title, but not for this book)
Singing in Innocence (my original choice, but it's too prosey, too victorian)
Stern and Infallible Dictates (dead-on, but kinda high-minded)
Launched on the Terrible Sea (pretty, but perhaps too pretty)
A Wicked School (a variation on The Four Schools)

i'm not wildly fond of any of them except the dog one. it pretty much sums up the whole point of the story (and Mr. Poppet encounters a dog, so it's kinda nicely metaphoric and literal at the same time). but i still think it's too long (and kinda odd) for a proper title.

i may have to turn to Gat or one of the other newspapers for something suitable.

i am so lousy with titles.

: o p

okay, i promised myself i would write a scene tonight, so i am going to go actually do that now. eeeeeee!