I’m stuck on a scene and thinking a free-write might help.
I also want a blog post. So guess what I’m going to do?
Yep.
So. Scene in the manor house has no conflict at all. Well, okay, Ume and Cree snipe a bit at each other, but that’s not enough. I was trying to make them fight a bit more, but that’s really…no. I don’t want the focus to be on them.
I thought of having Thorne’s hospitality be oppressive to Hiro, but then he’d have to notice how Thorne is laying it on thick, and it takes away from the talk on the roof. I want to keep the talk on the roof; it’s one of the best scenes in the manuscript.
Then I had this great image of Ume losing it and trying to kill Cree right then and there, but she has too much courtesy to destroy Thorne’s house attacking Cree. And that is what would happen. When Keepers battle, stuff gets BROKE.
Carp carp carp carp CRAP.
Okay. Don’t want to throw in a battle–they’ve got tons of those already. What if…hmm, would Hiro suggest that Ume stay there? They haven’t really had the chance to talk since the cave–well, since he ticked her off outside the cave. He’s still going to be worried about how close he came to killing her when he lost it.
Ooh, now this is getting somewhere…what if I have the whole lovely dinner scene, in which Ume and Hiro are happy to have some peace but Cree is highly suspicious, and then end it with an invitation to them all to stay? And then they get together in Ume’s room to talk, and Cree tells her she can’t stay, and Ume says who the f##! are you to tell me anything, but when Hiro says oh good you should stay she gets mad at him…
This…I’m liking this. Gives Hiro a chance to realize the trouble he’s in, moving things a little slower so he has time to think, to see Ume as something other than a great fighter with fantastic legs…and sets Cree up to be a jerk again. 
Well, that is his job, isn’t it?
Hmm. Why don’t I go see if that would work?