Echoes in a Hollow Space

Random quote of the day:

“The touchstone to plausibility in imaginative fiction is probably coherence. Realistic fiction can be, perhaps must be, incoherent in imitation of our perceptions of reality. Fantasy, which creates a world, must be strictly coherent to its own terms, or it loses all plausibility. The rules that govern how things work in the imagined world cannot be changed during the story.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin, “Plausibility in Fantasy,” ursulakleguin.com, 2005

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

One begins to suspect that one cannot just rewrite two and a half chapters, as one hoped, because in changing one's worldbuilding it sends ripples out through the rest of one's manuscript. One remains hopeful that after the major change in the two and a half chapters in question, one might be able to get away with minor changes in the final third of the book. But, regardless, one had better get one's arse in gear since the ms. has already been sent out on queries.

Sure glad I don't have that problem.

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?

I know they're both important, and I would dearly love to open this up to a larger forum and hear what others think on this subject. Or perhaps someone with a larger audience might like to take up the question on their own blog?

ETA: Yes, this is mostly a rhetorical question for the purposes of discussion. As I said, both are important.

In my current state of mood, and having read far too many writing blogs for my own good, I'm thinking that voice ultimately trumps worldbuilding.

If book A has breathtaking ideas but writer A can't write h/er way out of a paper shroud, will a tree fall in the forest and still make a sound?

No wait, I said that wrong. How about this: if the worldbuilding is chock full of amazing ideas but the execution is poor, it seems to me the book will probably not sell or find an agent.

But I could be wrong. It has happened before. I'm sure you could come up with a few names as exemplars of good ideas/bad writing who have managed to get published and flourish, but I have to think they are exceptions. Or are they?

Perhaps this is a better example: If writer B, for instance, has good worldbuilding, and is a solid writer, but doesn't have that spark of voice, that fresh way of telling the story, I'm not sure they can break through. Whereas writer C may have so-so worldbuilding, but a fresh and original voice, and gets a 3-book deal.

Or can they? Which is more important--voice or worldbuilding?

Is "khaki" a color or a concept?

Khaki in our world refers to a very particular shade of dusty brown/beige, but the derivation of the word comes to us from Persia via India and the British Raj and, according to Wiki, a particular shade of mud in Multan. It's a cultural-thing, but in modern times it's come to be a color-thing. I wouldn't hesitate to use "green" because it comes from the Old English word for "to grow," but khaki does seem to have more cultural baggage than other color-related terms.

(The French, always contrary, use khaki to mean olive drab, but we can't do anything about the French, so I'm referring to brown-beige color.) (Kissy-kissy to my friends in France.)

My question is, how big of a worldbuilding sin would it be to use the word khaki on an alternate universe Earth?

I guess I could say something like "sand-colored uniforms," but it seems kind of non-specific. Or maybe I'm just thinking inside the box. What do you think?

Well, the Work Project From Hell has finally wound down and I've spent the day trying to catch up on everything else.

Somewhere in there, chapter 14 got finished, as Charged with Folly hit 62,000 words. I'm thinking this middle of the book may be suffering a bit from plot flatulence. There's a certain aroma which reminds me of Plotting By Stupidity, but we'll see if it airs out over time.

Maybe what's wrong isn't plot flatulence but worldbuilding flatulence. The thought occurred to me today that perhaps when I do the rewrites I need to put in more shiny steampunk machines or exotic critters. The middle of the book hasn't seemed saggy to me because for the most part it's been chugging along quite nicely and I haven't felt that middle book fatigue (yet) because I struggled so much with the beginning. But plot or worldbuilding gastric distress...yes, that's a possibility.

Or maybe I'm still just obsessing on last week's stomach virus.


Random quote of the day:

"Always listen to the experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."

—Robert Heinlein


Which quote I find somewhat ironic considering how often he's invoked as The Voice of Authority.

Over the weekend I was thinking that perhaps my next project should be to turn one of my novellas into a novel (and neither has vampires!). One is "Sealed with A Curse" which is really a long novelette, coming in at just over 15k; the other is "Hortensia's Man," just shy of 31k. I'm thinking it would take less time to produce finished novels from either of these than starting from scratch with another. I'm trying to play the percentages here, to have more "product" in the pipeline, but it's hard to tell where the true percentages lie. I want to write Charged with Folly, but my perception at this stage is that it will take much longer.

"Curse" has some problems with research I'm not ready to tackle at this point in time, but the 15k that's set in the 18th century would be just a small part of the novel, anyway. Mostly, it's a contemporary fantasy harkening back to events in 1727. "Hortensia" takes place entirely in the Nineteenth Century and I'm sure that anyone who knows early California history would find plenty wrong with it--but the good thing about that story is that very little of it takes place in Known History. The bulk of the story, part one (the 30k novella) and part two, as yet unwritten, take place in a made up valley away from most of the centers of European population and history. California was sparsely populated with the European-descended in the early 19th century. That's the history I'm mostly going to be dealing with in that story. But even there, the particular tribe I'm writing about is also a made up tribe: based on the mores of California Indian tribes I've read about, but still made up.

Since there's more of "Hortensia" and since she's been lobbying for a novel of her own ever since she first popped into my brain; since I've done tons of intricate worldbuilding on the Dos Lunas valley already, maybe that's the way to go. Do I have 50k more words in me to make this a novel? Initially I want to say, "Hell, yeah." But I wonder. Is the conflict strong enough? I can't quite tell until I get in there and start playing around.

And I haven't finished Night Warrior yet. And I think everyone's sick of it, so that isn't helping my motivation any. "You are a self-motivator, Pam," I remind myself. Yeah, I am, but sometimes I live reflected in the eyes of others. So sue me.