My writing space has become a laboratory. In my latest Work-In-Progress, there is an extended chase/fight scene. I'm not huge on fight scenes really, and I rarely include them. Joy & Carnage, for example has none. Neither has Cold. So I've found myself asking, how do I write an action scene that consists of more that:

James ran and jumped. He punched the fellow in his face. The two of them tumbled down the slope until James exploded.

The general pattern in that scene is noun-verb-noun, noun-verb-noun, etc. To escape this, I've begun studying Haiku, a Japanese style of poetry that consists of three lines with five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. I'm experimenting with action scenes written in haiku form.

An example of an action-scene set to haiku would be:

Light poles like comets' tails

flew past in hurried flashes,

too fast to count them.

The driver veered left.

Vigilante fell sideways,

almost eating street.

After editing them back into prose, I hope that they'll possess a little more flavor than usual.

Vigilante is now officially my next project. I've started building the framework--number of chapters, average word per chapter requirements, order of events, general outline--I have a few plot issues to work through and a couple spiritual things to work into place.

Here's the general idea. Vigilante is going to be the story of a big city crimefighter who loves his city, but leaves it when he's offered a documentary deal with the Law & Justice Channel. the show bombs miserably, and he returns to the city to resume his duties. In essence, it is a retelling of The Prodigal Son which, in turn, was Christ's illustration of the Jewish nation's displeasure with the Gentiles' acceptance of righteousness.

I plan to spend another week on brain-storming before I actually put finger to key (because no one puts pen to paper anymore). Hopefully I'll get that part finished soon. She hasn't said anything, but I'm fairly certain that my wife isn't too happy that her brand new dining room table is covered with the little squares of paper I use to put my plot in order.

On August 1, I'll start work on my next project. I've boiled it down to two ideas and I like both very much. One of them has about 7,000 words in it already, the other is barely an outline. I burned through the last novel so hard that I don't know what to expect this time around. If I write it at the same pace I was writing the last five chapters of Joy & Carnage, I'll finish it in a month and a half (I have no intentions of doing so).

The first is called Tinker, and I imagine it could be described as The Italian Job meets about 1% of Chronicles of Narnia. Weird? The idea is that a thief stumbles into a restaurant where the saints in Heaven dine, and he meets a converted burglar who wants Stanley to find and return a lost treasure.

The second is tenatively titled Vigilante, and retells the story of the prodigal son as a vigilante that is loved by his city, but leaves it after being offered a television program about his life.

Come Friday, I'll probably flip a coin and start.