Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 136

Storms, and Roads Not Taken

I had a weird start to the day when I was awakened at 4:30 this morning by a weird, garbled, disembodied voice coming from my living room. The weather radio was alerting me to some kind of warning, but the reception was really bad, so every other syllable or so was cutting out and I couldn't make out what was going on. I got the sense that it involved a storm with hail and wind, but I couldn't tell where it was because the words it was cutting out were generally the place names. So I turned the TV on, figuring that if it was serious, they'd be covering it. I'd forgotten that they now start the morning news at 4:30, so it was the regular morning newscast, with eventually a mention of a storm on the other end of the county, so I went back to sleep.

And then another warning went off, similar garbling, and I assumed it was the same storm, just renewing the warning. I went back to sleep. Then it went off again. All this time, there were no storms anywhere near me, but apparently it was pretty nasty south of here, with windshields being knocked out by hail.

Watching a bit of the early morning news gave me a dose of nostalgia for when that was the show I worked on, back in my news intern days. Fortunately, we didn't go on the air until six, so I didn't have to be there until 5:30. I liked working that shift because it was just the producer, the anchor, and me in the newsroom. The producer gave me stuff to write, the anchor sang while doing her hair and makeup, and then once the newscast went on the air, it was just me and the daytime assignment editor (who'd shown up by then) in the newsroom. I wrote the cut-ins that ran on the half-hour during Good Morning America, and the rest of the time I could work on stuff like practicing editing videotape and putting together a resume tape. Being there early also meant I got first dibs on the most interesting stories to go out on after the morning story meeting.

But I'm very glad I'm not doing that job now. It was so not me that only sheer stubbornness got me through it to get a degree. I don't know what I'd have changed to or should have changed to. I probably should have pursued my real interests and studied television/film writing, but then that would have required moving to LA, where I know I wouldn't have fit in and probably wouldn't have been very happy. So it probably worked out for the best. I got skills that I've ended up using in my "real" career and didn't ever have to rely on that job to make a living.

I have a bit of business stuff to deal with today (like getting my trip to the Nebula Awards set up) and I have some major book surgery to continue with. Today, I should be through the "easy" part, which means tomorrow I'll hit the part that requires a lot of rewriting. Right now, I'm in the part that took months to write, and it seems weird to just read through it in a few minutes. I don't think it shows that I went through about three versions before I settled on what would happen.

Now, for a celebration of St. Patrick's Day, here's my new favorite Celtic band that isn't Irish at all but rather the Celtic band of the US Air Force, Celtic Aire. This one is amateur video, but it's the only one I could find of this particular song, and I liked it when I heard them do it:

Breaking Out (Or Not)

I got about a quarter of the way through the major surgery phase of revisions on the book yesterday, but this is the easy part because it's mostly the section that I submitted to the publisher, so it was pretty polished. And at the end of the day, I realized that I'd forgotten to add or fix a couple of the things I'd planned. I guess it's a good sign that I got so caught up in the story that I forgot about those things. Today I'll do that backtracking and then see how much more I can get to before choir practice. At least I don't have children's choir tonight.

I'm having my usual bizarre transition to Daylight Saving Time. The clocks have moved ahead, so everything feels an hour earlier than it says on the clock. And yet I've moved even earlier. I'm going to bed earlier and waking up earlier, and I'm getting more things done earlier in the day. I guess summer time fits closer to my regular body clock. I sleep later on Standard Time because when I naturally wake up, it feels too early to be getting up, so I go back to sleep and go through another sleep cycle before I wake up. During Standard Time, when I get sleepy earlier in the evening, it seems too early to go to bed, so I force myself to power through and get a second wind. Now, it seems like a reasonable time to go to bed when I get tired, and it's a reasonable time to get up when I wake up. And then through the whole day I feel like I have more energy, so I get more done.

The response to my Enchanted, Inc. series reread has been fun to see. It seems a lot of people love these books. And yet, they're still rather obscure. The major genre-related web sites haven't covered them or me. I've noticed in various fantasy-related groups that they're seldom mentioned when people are asking for authors or books that mine would fit into. I think some of that is on my original publisher because they didn't treat these books like fantasy, and so they didn't make much effort to promote them to that audience. It does seem as though fantasy readers who find them really like them, but a lot of my readers aren't the typical fantasy reader. I go to a lot of science fiction conventions, and my books seem to be popular there, but that doesn't seem to have spilled out to create any kind of overall fandom buzz, and I don't really know how to fix that. It's even harder now that the first couple of books are more than ten years old. Even if there were a new book, the major book news sites that didn't cover the earlier books aren't likely to cover the new book, and they're not going to get into a first book in the series that's ten years old. Still, the series keeps plugging away, and the first book is usually my highest-ranked book on Amazon at any given time.

It's been interesting going back and re-reading Once Upon Stilettos. I wrote the first draft of that book in the fall of 2004, did revisions in early 2005, and did copy edits in fall 2005. As a result, it's now been long enough since I wrote it that I can almost read it as a reader without trying to mentally edit it and without being constantly conscious of having written it. And at risk of sounding egotistical, I have to say that man, this book is good. The voice is strong, the writing just snaps and sparkles, and there are so many good moments. This book isn't usually top of mind for me. It's sort of a middle child of books, but when I really think about it, it may be my favorite thing I've written so far. I'm rather surprised, looking at it now, that this wasn't a breakout book that made the series really take off. It got up-front bookstore placement and was even in Target (though in small enough quantities that in my neighborhood store, it sold out within days and was never restocked). So I'm not sure what happened, but to me, being able to put aside my writer hat, this reads like a breakout book that should have just exploded and propelled the series to another level.

On the other hand, a lot of "breakout" books from that same time period are out of print, and this one is still selling well enough that I can't get the rights reverted.

I guess the answer is to keep plugging away, and maybe someday something I write will hit whatever magic formula that makes it break out, and that will then spread to everything else I've written.

The Reread Continues: The Infamous Red Stilettos

Last year (maybe -- I lost all track of time), I did a reread/commentary on the first Enchanted, Inc. book, and this morning when I spotted the Infamous Red Stilettos lying on my bedroom floor (where I really need to put them away after having worn them to a convention a month ago) I thought I ought to pick that up again and do the second book.

So, now for a reread/commentary of Once Upon Stilettos. There may be spoilers for the entire series, as I'll likely address things that come up later. I'm not on any particular schedule. This may be something I do when I can't think of anything else to talk about.

Now, for the beginning ...

It all started with the red shoes, except it actually didn't. While I was writing the first book, I started getting ideas for what would happen in the rest of the series, based on random bits of conversation when someone brought up the possibility of something happening, and I made a note that it should probably happen. As an aside, I guess I was pretty obvious about that because a few years ago there was a team attempting to turn this series into a TV series, and I had a conference call with the lead writer in which she was giving me the pitch she'd give to network executives. She outlined the pilot and first season, then possible plot lines for subsequent seasons. I had to stop her and ask if she'd read the whole series, and she said she'd just read the first book. But her outline for the way each season would go followed the books pretty closely, with season 2 being a lot like book 2, and so forth. It was kind of eerie (but, alas, no network picked it up, and I thought these people would have done a great job with it).

When I got an agent and she was getting ready to try to sell the book to publishers, she had me put together blurbs for possible sequels, to demonstrate that it wouldn't just be one book. Then she made me combine what I had for books two and three into one book. My planned book two was about the mole in the company, with book three about Katie losing her immunity. Combining those plots made the story a lot stronger.

Around this time, when I had an agent but hadn't yet sold the book, I went shopping with a friend. Really, it was just window shopping. We went to one of the upscale malls and treated it almost like a museum. At the time, I had very little income. I'd been laid off from my job a couple of years earlier and was freelancing some, but that money didn't quite cover my living expenses, so I was living off my savings while writing books. And then I saw the shoes, those candy apple red stilettos. They called to me. I wanted them. They were totally impractical. I wouldn't have too many places to wear them or things to wear them with, and for that price I could have bought at least six pairs of shoes in my usual price range. I told my friend that if I sold the book, I'd buy those shoes. The shoes were not in the original plan for the book, nor were they in the plot line that was submitted to the publisher. I wasn't even thinking about them being incorporated into the book at that point.

Several months later, I did sell the book, and it was a two-book contract, with the book I'd already written and a sequel I'd planned but hadn't written a word of. I called my friend to tell her the news, and she asked what time I'd be over to pick her up to go shoe shopping. That day, we went to Nordstrom, and I bought the Infamous Red Stilettos. I must say, I was still wavering on whether I should do it because for me that was a lot of money and I'd never bought an item of clothing that expensive. When we got back to my friend's place, I was still talking myself into buying the shoes I'd already bought, justifying it to myself. I mentioned that the shoes had called out to me. They were magical.

And then, click, I had the opening line and the opening scene for the book I needed to write. Since the book was going to involve Katie losing her immunity, the shoes were the perfect way to show that effect on her, as sometimes she was immune to the spell on them, and then there were moments when she absolutely had to have them. That opening scene was very much my experience when I first saw them and then later when I went to buy them. I just moved the scene to Bloomingdale's in New York (because that was the store in New York where I saw the same shoes and knew for sure they were there) instead of Nordstrom in Dallas.

Incidentally, the original planned title for this book was Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered, which I thought fit it perfectly. Except we found out that a much more famous author was going to be releasing a book with that exact title a few months before mine, so there was a last-second scramble to retitle it. Someone in the marketing department came up with the new title.

Go, Me!

I had a rather full weekend. Friday was quite a productive day. I did five loads of laundry (and put it all away and remade the bed), made a loaf of Irish soda bread, baked a truly evil pecan fudge pie (new recipe), and finished the first draft of my book.

I already know that it will need revising, and the big climactic action sequence definitely needs work. It seems that I made too foolproof a plan. I was so careful to have the characters think of contingencies and be smart about it all, and then after I wrote it I realized that a perfect plan executed flawlessly makes for less interesting fiction. I don't have to make the characters dumber, but I can have them run into something unexpected that throws a monkey wrench into the works. Even the best plan can't account for absolutely everything that might happen in a chaotic system where other people have free will. I also have a lot of tinkering to do earlier in the book to set up what comes later. My mom calls this "Bill and Tedding," after the running gag in the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, in which the time travelers keep getting out of sticky situations by telling each other to remember to go back in time later and put the thing they need in place. And then the thing they need suddenly is there. So now I need to go back in time and put all those things in place.

On Saturday, there was a get-together with friends, and that evening I finished knitting the cape I've been working on for months. So, yet another months-long project completed in the weekend.

Sunday morning, I was the soloist in the choir anthem for church, so I went to bed early Saturday night, adapting to the time change at bedtime. I was supposed to lead the preschool Sunday school singing, which meant getting to church a little earlier, but it turned out there weren't any kids because it was the start of spring break. Instead, I ended up getting a Harp 101 lesson and then I practiced my solo with the organist. I'm really glad I had the time to do that because I'd only heard the accompaniment on the piano, and it would have been frightening to hear it on the organ for the first time when I was performing it. I got to run through it a few times with her, then a few times with the choir and even with the microphone, so when I actually sang it, I was rather calm and confident. It was almost an out-of-body experience. People have told me it was good. I think it was okay and they weren't just being polite. But because I'm a raging perfectionist, there are things I know could have been better (and every time I have a solo, the sermon seems to end up being about perfectionism).

I spent Sunday afternoon reading a book I've been asked to provide a cover blurb for.

So, not bad for a weekend. It's supposedly spring break this week, but that only affects children's choir and dance. I still had yoga and still have a choir rehearsal. I'm eager to dig into revisions on the book. Now that the story is out, I can concentrate on making it better. I can also go back to doing more piano practice since I don't have to worry so much about practicing a solo.

A Week of Accomplishment

This is a week of accomplishments. For one thing, unless things go incredibly crazy, I will likely finish this draft of the book today. My usual daily word count would bring me to right about the word count I want for this phase of the book. I've seen the "movie" of the rest of the book in my head and played out the scenes, so I think it should go pretty smoothly. I just have to decide exactly where to end it, as the movie seems to continue to set up the next book, and I don't know if those parts need to go in the next book or this book.

One of my characters has really surprised me by rising to the occasion. I'd always imagined that this character might be able to do some things, but I didn't see it happening in this way or at this time.

I have to say, this book is turning out to be pretty good. That publisher is going to regret passing on it because this may be the one that starts the buzz for the series in a big way.

Of course, that will be after I've done some rewrites. I may give myself a couple of days off before I go back and start rewriting. By "days off," I mean doing my taxes and giving my house a good cleaning. And doing a ton of reading, as I need to read a book for a possible blurb and read all the Nebula nominees by the end of the month. In fact, Sunday is going to have to be a serious reading day for me.

My other accomplishment this week was playing a piece of music on the piano with both hands. I've always been fascinated with the piano. I had a little toy piano as a child, and I taught myself to play some basic things on it. The girl who lived across the street when I was in preschool through first grade was taking piano lessons, and when I was at her house, I'd go through her piano lesson books and then go home and try to do those things on my toy piano. I was the weird kid who begged for piano lessons while all my friends who were being forced to take them begged not to have to. But I didn't get to do anything musically (other than the regular elementary school music classes) until sixth grade, when I got to be in band. I'd sort of taught myself to read music, but that was when I really got fluent in reading treble clef, without having to stop to think what each line and space was.

When I was in my mid-20s, my parents gave me an electronic keyboard for Christmas, and I bought a "learn to play piano" book. Then I hit a major roadblock of frustration. I would look at an easy piece of music and find myself totally unable to play it. While I can look at the treble clef and identify a note at a glance, on the bass clef I had to stop and go "good boys do fine always." I'd played oboe and flute, so I wasn't used to the idea of playing more than one note at a time or having to make my fingers work independently. The keyboard got put aside, other than occasionally for helping me work out notes in choir music, but even there, it was easier to play it on the flute to see how it would go, since I couldn't play the piano in rhythm or at tempo.

A few years ago, I got a stand for the keyboard, so it sits more like a piano, and so I played with it more often. I got to the point where I could identify the keys without counting from middle C, and then I was able to play the melody line of music in rhythm or at tempo. I've also been trying to work on reading bass clef, so in choir when the director is working with the men, I make myself figure out the notes in their part.

So this week when I was working on my solo for church Sunday, I worked out how to play the chord that leads into my part (that first note is tricky to find). Then I thought I might be able to try playing for real, and I got out that book. This time, it seemed to click. I'm still in the early beginner stages, but I've worked my way up to playing songs that use both hands at the same time and that even use chords on each hand. I'm actually playing the piano! I've even managed to sing while playing. The keyboard is just outside my office and near the spot where I've been writing, so it makes a good break between writing sessions. I feel enough excitement about the achievement that I may even stick with working my way through this book, and then I'll have to look for more piano lesson books to keep developing.

One of my motivations right now may be the fact that a friend in choir has offered to lend me a Celtic harp and teach me the basics, but he has to get his loaner back from someone else. Since that will require using both hands and playing more than one note at a time (and a piano is basically a harp on its side), I figured that playing the piano would be good preparation while I wait. My goal is to be able to play something I can sing with, and a small harp is more portable than a piano. I tried playing guitar, but my skin doesn't form calluses, so pressing the strings against the frets was painful and didn't get better. I was taking lessons, and my teacher even said that it wasn't the instrument for me.

I've been trying to spend less time online, and this is what I've been doing with the time I've freed up.

Almost There!

It's one of those cool, rainy days when it's nearly impossible to get out of bed, but that means it's also good writing weather. I'm closing in on the end of the book. I just got to the big turning point that kicks off the final act. I suspect tomorrow will be a big writing marathon as I plow toward the ending. I know there's going to be a lot of editing and revision required. This draft was to get the plot done. I need to add/change a few scenes for plot reasons, and I think I need to deal more with emotions and relationships because while getting the plot worked out, I skimmed over a lot of that stuff.

But I'm so close to seeing how the story ends! I kind of know how it ends, but seeing it is a very different thing.

My kids were relatively easy to deal with in choir last night. Some of the surrounding school districts are on spring break this week, so the group was small, and the child who's usually the biggest problem wasn't there. We were able to actually do activities instead of spending the whole time stopping bad behavior. Though we do have the one kid who's doing this passive-aggressive hugging thing. He knows he gets in trouble for hitting, so instead he hugs everyone rather aggressively, then says "I was only hugging" when the other kid complains. We have to keep telling him that a hug isn't a nice thing if the other person doesn't want it, and he needs to ask if it's okay to hug someone first. He seemed a little surprised that we were on to him and knew he wasn't just being affectionate. Even if he was, it's not nice to hug people who don't want to be hugged (that's very important to me, since I'm not a big hugger).

And then I have spring break next week, so no children's choir. I'll still have a choir rehearsal, but no lesson plans or kids, and there's no dance class. I'm trying to decide if I want to go somewhere next week for a few days, especially if I finish the book.

Problem Characters: The Love Interest

I'm still talking about problem characters who tend to pop up in your writing and make your story more difficult. This week: the love interest. This isn't so much a problem in the romance genre because the structure of those stories dictates a hero and heroine as co-protagonists (or sometimes protagonist and antagonist) rather than a hero (or heroine) and love interest. It's more of a problem in other genres, where there is a hero doing other stuff, and he may have a love interest waiting at home for him, he may fall in love along the way, or he may be rewarded for success by getting romantic love. I'm going to mostly use "hero" here because this is primarily a problem with stories about men being "rewarded" with women. It can apply to either sex, but I haven't run across too many books with female heroines and non-entity love interests.

This character is mostly a problem when she's treated as nothing more than a motivation or a prize. You could replace her with a valuable vase without changing the plot all that much. I see two key issues that come up with these kinds of characters. If the love interest is already in a relationship with the hero, her being weak and undeveloped makes readers turn against her and want her to die so the hero can be with someone more interesting -- and quite frequently she does, as this character's role is often to be killed so the hero will be motivated to go after the villain. If the love interest is a kind of reward for the hero for his heroism and she's weak and undeveloped, the relationship isn't very believable. We've just watched this hero go through all kinds of stuff, being smart and brave, and then he ends up with this insipid mannequin.

One way to avoid this problem is to stop thinking in terms of "love interest." Unless it's critical to your plot that your hero fall in love with this particular character, just create a cast of characters and see what develops. Give each character a role in the story (aside from love interest), then throw them all together in the plot. You may find one of them fitting well with the hero, and then you can work on developing that relationship. If the plot does require the pairing, give the love interest the same kind of development you'd give to any other character, and find some additional role in the story for this character to play -- friend, partner, member of the team, minor antagonist, etc.

Think twice if your plot requires the hero's wife/lover/girlfriend to be killed in order to motivate him or raise the stakes. That's a trope that's become known as "fridging." Is there some other way other than killing a woman to motivate the hero? If you absolutely must do it, at least let her be a real character who has some other existence than to die for the sake of the plot. Don't just make the hero care what happens to her. Make readers care. Make them feel her loss rather than celebrate because he's now free to be with the far more interesting sidekick.

The same thing applies to a love interest as a reward. Give this character an active role in the story, not just wringing her hands while the hero's in danger and then giving him the big "my hero" treatment at the end. Ideally, readers should be wanting these two people to get together because they like both of them and can see how they'd be good for each other.

Generally, a fictional love story requires some reason the two characters should be together -- affinity, common goals or interests -- and something to overcome -- internal issues, external circumstances. In a romance novel, the conflict to be overcome is the critical part of the story, but outside that genre it may be less important. You don't have to work to keep the characters apart until the happy ending, but you may have a more interesting story if they do have something to overcome, whether it's internal wounds that need to be healed or circumstances that have to be resolved before they have time to start a relationship.

Letting your hero fall in love with a fully fleshed-out character rather than a cardboard standup will only improve your story.

Ugh, Mornings

I've had to get up early (for me) for four days in a row now, since I had a dentist appointment. And it was even raining. I know that people who work regular jobs are playing the world's tiniest violin for me right now, but setting my own schedule and not having to get out of bed early on rainy mornings is one of the perks of this career that makes me reconsider when I get fed up and frustrated with the business. It's worth dealing with the uncertainties and craziness to have that kind of freedom. To make matters even more fun, my weather radio went off with a severe thunderstorm warning right as I was getting dressed, but fortunately the bad stuff had just cleared this area before I had to leave.

Tomorrow, though, is going to feel like a weekend when I finally don't have to set an alarm.

There's something about my dentist appointments. My "winter" appointment used to fall in late January or early February, and it tended to be sleeting on that day. Now that my schedule has shifted a bit, I guess I'm getting thunderstorms.

The other thing that tends to happen during dentist appointments is that's when my agent always calls with news. In fact, I got my initial offer of representation during a dentist appointment. Nothing this time, alas.

But this kind of weather is excellent for writing, so I'll be going offline all afternoon and settling down with the book.

Resisting the Nap Urge

I suspect it will take an act of will and a lot of tea to get much work done today. There's a triple whammy of several early mornings in a row, plus a yoga class this morning that wore me out, plus a rainy day. Even as I sit upstairs in my office, I can feel the pull of my bed from downstairs. Just a teensy nap won't hurt, will it?

I'm heading into another busy stretch of programmed weekends. Most of it is fun stuff, but it's still stuff on the calendar. It's that time of year when choir kicks into high gear. I've got the solo in the choir anthem this Sunday, then next Sunday the children's choir sings, and then there's the Good Friday service and three Easter services. The weekend after Easter may be collapse time.

But with Downton Abbey over, that frees up some TV time. I found the ending satisfying, though I had minor issues with the outcome. In too many cases, the romantic relationships were more "tell" than "show." In the first couple of seasons, Matthew and Mary had enough interaction for us to see how well they fit. One of the interim guys also seemed to generate some real sparks, and she even lowered her guard with him. With the final guy, while their relationship seemed okay in the finale, in all the lead up to it we barely saw them interact. There were more scenes of other characters talking about how perfect they were for each other than there were of them being perfect together.

Then they may have gone a wee bit overboard with pairing off just about everyone, or at least hinting at who they'd be paired off with. The world isn't Noah's Ark. You can end a story without everyone having the perfect mate. I actually was kind of pulling for Mary to remain single. She'd never been overly enthused about the idea of marriage. She loved Matthew, and she had the much-needed heir, and after that I could have imagined her being happily "married" to the estate.

I may rewatch the first couple of seasons someday. That seems like a good rainy weekend activity.

Meanwhile, I was kind of meh on the Once Upon a Time midseason premiere/100th episode. In case you hadn't figured it out by now, Regina apparently really didn't like Snow White in the past. But she's a hero now (and yet, we've never seen her say she was wrong to keep trying to kill Snow White, and she's never apologized for any of that). Maybe it'll pick up again next week. This week, I got a lot of knitting done.

Now, to will myself to work rather than crawling into bed.

Farewell to an Era

I managed to write yesterday. It was very exciting. I seem to have finally emerged from my haze. Now I might start to make actual progress again. But first, I have adult-type stuff to do, like get my car safety inspected so I can renew my registration. It's still early in the month, so I have time, but I have to get new license plates this time around, which means that I can either do the inspection early and then renew by mail or online, or I can wait until later in the month and go stand in line at the tax office. I suppose I could still do it sometime next week, but I have some other errands, and it's a reasonably nice day, so I may as well take care of it today and get it out of the way.

This weekend marks the end of an era, with the final episode of Downton Abbey Sunday night. I can't believe I wasn't initially planning to watch it, but the review in the newspaper was so glowing that I thought I'd give it a shot, and I loved it. Alas, the first season was really the high point. They made some questionable decisions after that, skipping through most of the war, the terrible romantic triangle, the "miracle" cure. Then they started losing actors left and right, and I'm not sure the show ever recovered from Matthew's death -- all that buildup to his relationship with Mary, and then he was gone. I bought the first two seasons on DVD, but I haven't bought the rest because it was no longer something I could imagine rewatching, and once they were into the 20s, the fashion was no longer quite so much to swoon over. This season has become kind of lackluster, and they have a really bad habit of making the interesting stuff take place offscreen. But I love the characters, and I might find myself missing them, even while I'm ready for the show to end before it becomes even more of a parody of itself.

So, Sunday night I may put on a nice hat or maybe a tiara and settle down with a glass of champagne to say farewell to an era. I suspect there was a lot of Downton Abbey influence in the world of Rebel Mechanics, just with the dealings with household staff and the divide between the upstairs world and the downstairs world. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'm sure I couldn't help but be influenced by something I was enjoying. I did once quote the dowager countess in responding to a question posed by an editor (they wondered about a ball being held on a weeknight, to which I replied "what is a weekend?" -- people who don't have jobs don't have to worry about scheduling things around weekends).

This is also the return of Once Upon a Time for the spring season, but advance reviews are saying this is mostly a Regina episode, with token appearances by other cast members, so that's nothing to get excited about. It's their 100th episode, and it says something about where the writers stand that they center a milestone episode around a single character, and that single character in particular. If ever there was a cause to do a true ensemble episode, you'd think #100 would be it.