This week I spent a surprisingly long stretch of time working over just a few paragraphs in “Stop That Cow!” It’s right after the farm couple discover one of their cows is missing and based on feedback of a friend, I tried smoothing out what he felt were logical inconsistencies with the scene in terms of how the cow could have escaped and the number of vehicles readily available at a small family farm. In the original draft I had two vehicles–a truck and a tractor. The truck was in the shop for repair so the protagonist uses the tractor to slowly look for the missing cow.
The point was raised that they would have more vehicles, especially being on a farm. Because a large chunk of the story rests on the protagonist driving the tractor I had to first come up with other vehicles they might logically have and then devise reasons why they couldn’t use any of them except the tractor.
I added a station wagon that had its engine sabotaged, then decided that was too sinister, so I changed it to mysteriously not starting. That worked better but wouldn’t they still have another truck or something? Maybe. At that I was ready to run the story over with a combine.
I’m still pondering that.
I think I may shift over to National Novel Writing Month preparation instead.
Stupid cow.
