Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“Plot is what gives your characters something to do while they banter.”

—Elizabeth Bear, Twitter, July 29, 2010

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.”

—Publilius Syrus, Maxim 469

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep readers reading….When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do.”

—Kurt Vonnegut, interview, The Paris Review, Issue 69, Spring 1977

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Here’s another writing question for you: does every genre story have to start in media res?

I think it may be a genre preference, and I do often enjoy stories that begin with a burst of speed, throwing the reader into the water and forcing them to swim or drown. Certainly, if you’re writing urban fantasy or paranormal romance or space opera or some such sub-genre, you’re probably going to want a quick immersion in plot.

But those aren’t the only kind of stories, and some of my favoritest stories in the world have not begun with a bang and a pop. They’ve built slowly, meandered through interesting character and setting introductions, created magic with language, ever so many lovely loads of language, and eventually, yes eventually, wandered up to the plot and politely shaken hands before throwing it to the mat and beginning the wrestling match.

I’m not sure those kinds of stories are in fashion anymore. But I would be interested to know what you think on the subject. This is another of those personal preference things, and there is no wrong or right answer, I don’t think. There is just what is, and what you think, and what the market will bear.

Or what the reader will bear.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

POVs are breeding like rabbits. Once I violated my "no new POVs late in the story" rule with Ramona, it looks like I uncorked the bottle and released the hounds...the genie, that is. Another new POV cropped up in chapter 26 and I suspect at least one more is going to happen before I'm done. At this point, though, anything I can do to keep the story moving forward (albeit, slowly) is a good thing. I'll worry about fixing things later.

And things are going slow. Part of the reason, I suspect, was that the ending of this novel got so complicated I was forced to do a detailed outline in order to tie up all the loose ends. It's killed a lot of the storytelling impetus for me. Or maybe I'm just tired. Or maybe my discipline, which used to be so discipliney, has gone south on permanent vacation.

I would really (really really) like to write a simple, straightforward novel next time. Really. My ideas get so dingdangnabbily complicated, each and every time. But my mind doesn't seem to work that way. Except for my "short stories." Most of those have novelistic pretensions, but I call them short stories because they don't have the infernal complications my longer work tends to have. Maybe I should pursue that. Maybe there are some simple, straightforward novels there. I'd probably finish more.

Or maybe I'm just in the process of re-evaluating who I am as a writer, what I want from this writing game, what I don't want. I know that I am a writer and will always write, I just don't know about the rest of it anymore.

And here's a wonderful post from Justine Larbalestier on writing versus a career in writing. It couldn't have come at a more propitious time for me.

I've been steadfastly dividing the narrative of my WIP between two characters, but I've reached an impasse where the next series of scenes I need to write can't logically be told from either of those POVs. I hate it (hate it hate it) when a novel is cruising along in one or two POVs for most of its length, then a new one is thrown in for only one or two scenes. If there have been a number of narrators throughout, that's one thing. I think you can get away with new POVs late in the book. But I've been writing in fairly tight third person.

I've been thinking for a week and can't find a way around this dilemma. I'm considering, for the sake of completing this damned draft, of succumbing and writing this new POV, then figuring a way to clean it up in later drafts. Because it's definitely holding me up, and having come to the brink of these scenes with no resolution, I'm wondering if that's what's been holding me up for some time now. The hind part of my brain has been anticipating these scenes, maybe, and putting the brakes on. Outlining the end helped get me over some of this, but the story is refusing to take that next step.

At times, my writing psyche is like a jump-shy horse. If it doesn't know how to solve a particular problem, it's been known to shut down a project altogether. It does no good to try to force the jump. It just won't go. For the most part, I've been used to not worrying about these things in my writing. I'll head off in the direction of home without knowing exactly what route I'll take, and almost always by the time I get to the quadruple fork in the road that's been worrying me for the whole journey, my backbrain will have come up with something and I'll know which path to follow.

Except sometimes.

It's hopeless asking my forebrain to try figuring it out. Forebrain just wants to put its fingers in its ears and start singing, "La la la la la, I can't hear you!"

So I've been working on stories in the interim, hoping that will jar something loose. It hasn't. Maybe I've reached the natural limits of my bag of backbrain tricks. Maybe this one will permanently stump me. It makes me all fidgety. It makes me feel all un-disciplined and dilletantish and failurish…

New POV, here I come…

Random quote of the day:


"A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled."

—Raymond Chandler, letter to Mrs. Robert J. Hogan, 1947 (in Raymond Chandler Speaking)





(Thanks to oracne.)




( Illustrated version. )



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I do believe Venus in Transit is the most diffuse and rambling novel I've ever written. There is a real conflict in the story, but through most of the book it's taking place at an elevated level that I've left hidden from the reader. Bad idea—at least from a genre POV. It's one thing to charm the reader with antic or exciting goings-on, but if the conflict remains invisible, they will probably give up in frustration, muttering, "Where's the beef?"

Clearly, the story needs a big restructuring and I need to stop with the coy stuff and let the reader know what is at stake and how those stakes effect my main characters. As structured now, that doesn't become evident until quite a bit later in the novel. I'm not sure the readers will stick around for the reveal.

I've been trying to hold my feet to the fire the last couple of days, forcing myself to write out a detailed outline of what's happened so far, what's going to happen. It's already quite evident that one whole chunk of the novel should be removed in order to get to the revelation of conflict sooner. The seven chapters I've already posted to the workshop could also probably be reduced by half. And I need to reveal the protagonists more directly, maybe give the reader information that my characters don't yet possess. That, at least, would give them a sense of the sly, serpentine bad mojo lurking beneath the bright façade. It would at least give them some sense that there is conflict, that it does impact my characters, but the characters don't have any idea yet.

Yeah, that's what I should have done. These things are always so clear in retrospect. I can't decide whether I should pull VIT from the shop, do the restructure, then repost or if I should just proceed from this point on, fixing as I go, with the idea of fixing the front end in the next draft.

Decisions, decisions.

The novel that's working most powerfully on my psyche right now is actually the sequel to A Rain of Angels (maybe because I'm just about to start marketing AROA). I've done a lot of prep work on the sequel, and the main characters not only have a good, serious conflict but they now have names: Evanne and Scorch. For those of you who read AROA, Carsten and Rye are still around, but they'll be sharing the focus with these other characters. I haven't yet decided on POV, whether it will be with one character or multiples, but once I have that locked down I might actually be able to start writing this little baby.

But I dohave a tentative title. I've been jokingly calling it Intermittent Showers of Angels, but I think the new official working title will actually be The Great Awakening. I'm not sure if that title will make it across the finish line, but at least it's something to call the thing.

I've just passed through the most painful part of the rewrite, the part where I actually had to rewrite some scenes rather than just prettify the language. The monkey poo scene is no more! Or, actually, only the poo-flinging part. I knew it was a weak spot in the manuscript so I wasn't unhappy to see it go, but I wanted to rewrite it in such a way as to avoid a cascading domino effect on the rest of the story. I think I accomplished that, and may even have added depth to the story as a result.

I also recognized a need to go deeper on some of the worldbuilding. It hadn't occurred to me until this rewrite that I left out some important information, so I've added that in—a couple of infodumps that will have to be edited. About a page-worth of material overall added here and there in the ms. I've also been mapping out territories beyond the boundaries of the places covered in the story. I started that process early on, abandoning it when I got caught up in this story, but that wasn't such a smart thing. Making the maps forces me to look more closely at the world, and even if I don't use those things in the current novel, they inform the subtext. That depth thing.

While I'm at it, I'm going to see if I can do something about the plethora of middle manuscript scenes of people standing around talking about the plot. That's been bugging me, too. And this post by Nathan Bransford only heightened that feeling. Some of my "discussion" scenes have good emotional conflict. Others I'm going to have to study with a jaundiced eye.

I wanted to hurry this book out the door, but I have to face the fact that I am not going to be able to do that. I still have a good opening 11 chapters, and a good ending, but if I don't do the hard work required to make that middle live up to the other parts of the book, I'm not going to be happy. I've been tormenting myself—because that's my favorite sport, apparently—that I am doing this just to avoid sending it out. But I've had time to digest that, too. To mull and sift and go deep into my own heart and psyche. This isn't about not wanting to send the book out. This is about making it the best book I can. I have been trying to ignore that part of the equation, but I can't. My deeper angels (demons?) won't let me get away with that indefinitely.

And that's as it should be.

I'm not unhappy about this. Figuring it all out has been liberating. This has been the book that didn't quite sit right in my gut. Now I know why, and now I know I can make it better.

A Rain of Angels




But where are the Zokutous of yesteryear?

People sitting around in rooms discussing the plot-just-happened will be the death of me.

Woe to me and the failure of imagination!

Woe, I say!