Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Literary Twister
Last night, this morning at the gym and during various downtimes of the day, I've been mulling over this particular scene that Just Wasn't Working the way it needed to. It involves Xia giving Alexandrine a substance that affects people with magic. Originally, he did it to prove to her she has magic. But the
new! Alexandrine already knows that. Obviously, that original scene needed a re-write. While notebooking at the gym, I settled on her taking the pill by accident. I recognized the idea was a wee bit lame, but I thought if I meditated on it some more, I'd see my way to the solution. I am not at my best at 5:00 a.m.
So I sat down to do the work this evening and I was in there with the machete getting things conformed etc and at last I get to the substance scene at the end of chapter 6. How is she going to take this pill?
She's not. It turns out, as I was writing, that, as a former teen runaway (which was previously established) she had issues with drugs and does not take any drugs ever anymore. Color me surprised! But this revelation ended up being a major development in their relationship. Oh! Oh! I get it! Neat-o.
But now I had a chapter 7 of substance-induced events that needed a new home. And I knew the perfect place for it. Between chapters 13 and 14. The beginning of 14 got spliced onto the top of chapter 7 which was renumbered as Chapter 13 (with 8-13 becoming 7-12)
Are you following me here? and then about-to-be 13 and 14 were temporarily combined so I could look for the best chapter ending. Found it. Chopped it. And
Voila as they say in France. Chapters 7 and 14 were spliced and split and became 13 and 14. It's a bit messy yet but tomorrow I will smooth that out into a scene that has my heroine who is afraid of backsliding on drugs facing the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of taking a drug that humans with magic routinely abuse... See? Much more at stake.
It's like that game Twister. Only with words and paragraphs and my characters and story instead of people.
This sounds like a horror show, I know. I suspect it is, but that's how it's been for all my books so far. I have an advanced case of
esprit d'escalier only since these great ideas have to do with a novel which takes a while to put together, I can actually go back with the perfect
bon mot and nobody will ever know I didn't think of it until way late.
I have to do this kind of slice and dice very quickly because I often need to have 3 or 4 chapters all in my head as I reassemble and sort out the bits and put the left overs in the right places, and I don't want to forget who's going where. If I go too slow or think too much every thing just goes to heck. It's scary because in the middle every thing's a bit fat mess, and I get in there and muck about and then it's all better. Usually. To be honest, sometimes it's not and I have to start over. But this one feels good.
Labels: editing, Pantsing, writing freaking writing, writing process, Xia
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Monday, May 14, 2007
Monday for sure
I should have known when I woke up exhausted and decided to skip the gym that I wasn't well. But I got my extra hour of sleep and went to work. 2 hours later I came come. The really good news is our Koi are parents. Four of them between 1.5 and 2 inches long. We know it's the Koi and not the goldfish because the babies look like the Koi: Orange, black and white. One of them is mostly orange. A while back they were doing a lot of breaching the water. I think they were "flirting." Sometimes I'd hear the splash from my room (the koi pond is right outside my sliding glass door) or I'd look just in time and see them pretending they were whales. Anyway, big excitement here today.
I got some work done today despite the foggy brain. I decided to work on my missing chapter. I picked a good spot and started and after a bit I went
If this keeps up, Carolyn, this will be boring. So I stared out the window for a while and then got back to work and now my antagonist is with my heroine and there's some stuff going down. And I've got to go find out out that ends up...
Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, Pantsing
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
In Which Carolyn Writes Herself out of a Corner
69K words for Magellan's Witch. I almost gave up for the night about 45 minutes ago. I was fixing more stuff and getting my hero in those scenes he needed to be in and then I wrote myself into a corner. I'd moved a bunch of stuff around so I was only addressing a certain subject in one place instead of more than one, I consolidated characters etc, and then for a while things were a big awful mess. The choreography was all wrong and people were standing around awkwardly, either too close to or too far from wherever they needed to be, and the tension was going pfft and then, even worse, I realized that if I were my hero and heroine (which in a way I am) I'd just get the heck out of Dodge. And I tell you it's not a fun feeling when you realize you have all your key characters together in a scene that's supposed to be tense only there's no reason on earth to believe these people would ever be in the same room with each other without pulling knives. In my own immortal words, uh oh.
I just wanted to say
Carolyn you hopeless hack, stop here for now and fix it tomorrow. In fact, I did say that.
But I kept going and fixed my staging and set problem and all of a sudden my antagonist was doing some really unexpected creepy stuff and it totally worked. He came up with the reason why they should even be in the same room, let alone talking and lying and establishing agendas and the like. Neat. And what a relief, I might add.
Labels: editing, Magellan's Witch, Pantsing
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