Conundrum

I've been working on building my story skeleton a la Story Engineering. Anyone who read my previous post knows I've been having a great deal of fun with the "what if" questions.

That led me to something of an epiphany today. The more I think about my story, and the more intricate it needs to get to reach the end, the more storylines I actually have.

How do I fix that? Things look all muddled, like a plate of spaghetti, when I reach the middle. For instance, I realized yesterday that a scene I liked, which I included because it illustrated the burgeoning relationship between protagonist and lover, may or may not be necessary. How can you tell? Or...how can you tell if it has enough "oomph"?

Now, I could be asking these questions because I only managed to get a couple of hours of sleep last night. My roommate (who goes out gaming on Saturday afternoons) and I decided to go to Walmart in the middle of the night to get hurricane stuff. (Thanks, Isaac!) Then I had to get up because a friend needed to see me.

Or it could just be that I'm tired enough to let the questions loose.

I go back to work tomorrow. I've been assigned 8 classes this semester, but I won't have any students until Tuesday. So maybe I'll get some more work done then.

See you all on Wednesday! (Yawning and waving goodnight)