Story Killers

My new work in progress (wip) is on a hit list. In the story, the heroine chases and pins down especially slippery pieces of information. I know who the assassins are - search engines. They have become so ubiquitous that the name of one of them is now the verb for using them all ("Google it on Bing.").

 Because of search engines, the missing information my heroine is spazzing over musn't be accessible on the public web, or the deep web (sites requiring subscriptions). Since almost everything is on the internet, the information must be purposely hidden. Anything less than that won't be believable. The last thing I want is for a reader to ask, "Why didn't she just Google it?", and then in exasperation, throw the book aside.

 Since I hadn't given enough thought to the plot for my new story, I have to rework the inciting incident. Also, prior knowledge and motivations of several major characters have to change. Who am I kidding? The whole narrative has to change. Luckily, I've only gotten about 10K words into it. On the plus side, the adjustment makes the story far stronger and is a natural source of dramatic irony.

 Surprisingly, the outline will only change by the inciting incident sentence. The scene table is just an empty structure - except for scene names and characters - so it won't change at all. Looks like I started my artifacts at the right level.

 As much as I want to vent about it, starting over really isn't that bad.

 *headdesk*

 *headdesk*

 *headwall headwall headwall*

 Excedrin. Headache #541...