I am on a Very Long Trip, but we are, at last, on the homeward bound stretch. Yesterday we set out with a city in mind. Several diversions and alarums later, we knew we would not reach our initial goal. We set a fallback goal… and then were able to exceed that, leaving us in the Great Swampy Middle. (Literally. We’re in the Florida panhandle.) There was a town just past where we felt we’d no longer be safe to continue, so we stretched hard, and managed a try-succeed instead of a try-fail cycle. Except…

Having rolled into town 15 minutes past when the hotel normally locks the doors for the night, we did get a room! We also got the classic “Yes… but”. Yes, they had a room. But the sudden yet inevitable sticker shock of the price… Ah, we had ignored the foreshadowing of it being Saturday night in a small town just off an Air Force Base, on the way to and from tourist destinations, whilst some places have their spring break. Ouch!

This is better than a try-fail cycle of “No, and”. We feared that having stretched so hard, we might be met with No vacancy, and furthermore, we are too tired to continue.

So we have a clean, comfortable room, with hot water and fluffy towels, and a whimpering credit card. We also had, when settling in a with a cuppa, a moment of reflection on the transient and plot-driven nature of the value of things.

How badly does your character want something – not just overall, but right now?

To a character sitting down to breakfast in a diner and anticipating coffee, a glass of icewater is take-it-or-leave-it. To a character who’s used part of the airship wreck in a blasted wasteland to improvise a splint and crutches, or to a soldier in the miserably hot and arid parts of the planet who’s boiling the river mud with a pinch of C4 and adding tea leaves enough to mostly camouflage the taste (if not the grit), that same glass of icewater is dreamed about, and obsessed over.

When I was first learning to work on cars, my father told me that using the right tool, the appropriate safety measures, and no skimping was worth it, as no matter how expensive the tool, emergency rooms cost a thousand an hour. This came up last night, in contemplating the cost of the hotel room. Sure, it was expensive, but the cost of a car wreck because we were too tired to be safe on the road? Cheap at twice the price. And so the huge obstacle… becomes less so.

This comes up in how characters react to events: While the newbie whom we’re following as a viewpoint character might get very stressed about something not going right… the old hand may shrug, as he’s weighing it against all the serious disasters on the trail and finding it trivial.

As my Calmer Half has said to me more than twice: “Calm down! Relax! It’s a good day; no one’s shooting at you!”

But as we drive the plot on, you can also make accomplishments change their relative value from one end of the scale to another, and by doing so, make what comes next matter. The highly desired goal of getting someplace, or accomplishing a thing, may become ashes and dust when the hero realizes that bigger forces are afoot, and everything he’s been focused on is nothing compared to the stakes and the scale he now sees ahead.

On the other hand, the small thing that was done only because it was important to the character, not the plot, that turns out to be the key to snatching victory from the jaws of defeat? It goes from tiny value to huge, at the critical moment.