Where the Maguffin meets the road
Feb. 21st, 2007 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonChapter 14 is a plot point chapter. Plot point chapters always give me fits because they're the places where the Maguffin happens, where the wrench goes into the works, and you've got to make sure that when they're done, your book is still aiming in the right direction.
Not that I tend to think of my fiction writing in moviespeak terms or plan things out that thoroughly (though once a film student always a film student). Once I know the characters fairly well and the general worldbuilding has taken shape, once I know how the thing is supposed to end (however I get there), then I take off running and jump from rock to rock. I don't say, "In chapter 14, plot point C happens." I just write like a hellion until I reach one of these pivot points and then I squiggle and squirm until I work my way through them. These chapters always take longer then the headlong dash of story between the pivots.
I'm still squiggling and squirming even though I know, essentially, how chapter 14 turns out; how, in other words, it turns in the direction I want it to go. And for once, it's being cooperative and agreeable about turning that way.
It should be clear sailing, but instead, to cloud this entry with yet another metaphor, I'm like a horse that refuses the jump. I stop dead, and the vision quest of my story goes sailing over my neck, or into the jump itself, or crashes to the ground. But the dream is hearty. It gets up, brushes itself off, and starts riding me again. Points off for balking, but I've been taking the rest of the course well. It'll head me around for a new approach to the jump. Maybe this time I'll go over it without a hitch.
But not today. Today I read some more of Warped Passages by Lisa Randall. But that's another post.
Random quote of the day:
"Death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."
—Rossiter W. Raymond
Not that I tend to think of my fiction writing in moviespeak terms or plan things out that thoroughly (though once a film student always a film student). Once I know the characters fairly well and the general worldbuilding has taken shape, once I know how the thing is supposed to end (however I get there), then I take off running and jump from rock to rock. I don't say, "In chapter 14, plot point C happens." I just write like a hellion until I reach one of these pivot points and then I squiggle and squirm until I work my way through them. These chapters always take longer then the headlong dash of story between the pivots.
I'm still squiggling and squirming even though I know, essentially, how chapter 14 turns out; how, in other words, it turns in the direction I want it to go. And for once, it's being cooperative and agreeable about turning that way.
It should be clear sailing, but instead, to cloud this entry with yet another metaphor, I'm like a horse that refuses the jump. I stop dead, and the vision quest of my story goes sailing over my neck, or into the jump itself, or crashes to the ground. But the dream is hearty. It gets up, brushes itself off, and starts riding me again. Points off for balking, but I've been taking the rest of the course well. It'll head me around for a new approach to the jump. Maybe this time I'll go over it without a hitch.
But not today. Today I read some more of Warped Passages by Lisa Randall. But that's another post.
Random quote of the day:
"Death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."
—Rossiter W. Raymond
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 01:44 am (UTC)It's just the same inner anxiety that make sus all so interesting.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 06:09 pm (UTC)