While I have the opening scene and the reasons of why the opening scene is unfolding as it will be sketched out, the rest of the story is coming very slowly to me. Others might say that their characters are being stubborn or their muses being recalcitrant, but I do not subscribe to the concept that any of these ideas are out of my control. My problem is that I have yet to find the goal that I'm going to aim for. I already have motivations for my characters, but as for what I want to accomplish with the narrative? Not a clue.
For most adventure stories, the sole goal is to entertain the reader. There really isn't any deeper meaning attached to the story. I'm aiming for that, too. If there's anything anyone takes away from reading it, I just hope that they enjoyed it as simply a good yarn. But I've written 50k before and I'm looking for some sort of challenge that goes beyond just the word count.
One possible motif that I am noticing with my characters is their relationship with their families and the issue of inheritance. I could make this into a Big Deal. After all, it is the matters of inheritance that drives the circumstances of the opening scene and the mystery subplot. It's the problems of inheritance that make some of the characters who they are.
A second possibility is the fantasy aspect of the story. While I was originally going to make this a relatively minor plot point, it could quite possibly blow up to be very big (as it certainly seems that way in the opening scene). For one of my characters, her Gift is a boon to her occupation, but she also sees it as "cheating" because she did not take the more difficult route of others in her profession who do not have her Gift. The other character shamelessly exploits his own Gift for his own gain and for political reasons. But due to the nature of his Gift, there is also a stigma associated which taints his relations with others.
But enough of this serious stuff. I'm still trying to figure out the optimal point in the story where I can off a character by having some ugly statuary from the third floor fall on him.
