Have decided to not think about the main secondary character or his plotlines, even though the book is named for him and he's basically the reason for writing it. Instead, I'm going to try working solely with the "real," plotty plotlines, and focusing on getting those to rise and build. This is an attempt at avoiding getting sidetracked, as I am wont to do, by scenes and character threads that do need to be there, but that aren't ramping up the plot-driven tension or conflict (a la Ron and the spiders--see yesterday's entry). I keep digging into those character/thematic threads and then looking up to find that I've confused myself and don't know where I am in the book.

I have nearly 100,000 words of this ms. There is no excuse for spending months and months and months spinning my wheels when most of it is already there on the page. So I'm going to try to be very strict with myself about this.

I do use outlines, but along the way, as a writing tool. They're not something I follow, but something that helps me step back and see the big picture all laid out at once. This is the outline I have from chapter 13 on:

1. splinter
2. salter
3. P. visit
4. sex
5. boar
6. P. has it
7. find out K.
8. blank (may be backstory; I know I'll need something here so the reader can absorb 7)
9. Jen
10. Night attack
11. take K. in
12. T. attack
13. death
14. on to P.
15. climax/end sequence


So I've got this all laid out (cryptically, but I'm the only one who needs to understand it, and I do), and all I bloody well have to do right now is fill out these scenes where stuff happens. That is all. And it's what I'm going to do.

*SPOILER*--reading this will ruin my dystopian novel for you, whenever it is finished and finally comes out.

I am not kidding about that. You have been warned.

Yesterday, moved large sections--chapters and series of scenes--around, trying to feel out how to keep this middle part moving along, rather than letting it sag into a puddle of smaller internal stories (the kind I like). I tried several different new orders just to see how it felt, but I think I ended up with something pretty close to the last general plan I made. Except now I see more threads that can be developed in the smaller internal story pieces to provide hooks and momentum.

I also had an important thought after shutting the computer off and going to bed, but didn't write it down so I forgot it. However, as soon as I started this post I remembered--which is one reason I do this blog, to keep the synapses greased so that ideas don't fade out, disappear, or get lost.

What I remembered doesn't seem like a big thematic issue, but I think it's a huge key to understanding how my ending needs to play out. It's also a huge key to the very-important thread of my Main Secondary Character--a key to knowing what points the MSC's scenes need to make and how they form an arc of change and realization for my MC.

I just jotted a vague and rough shorthand of this thought on a post-it, but the thought itself is important enough that, even though it's a spoiler, I'm going to write it here, too, to get it more firmly embedded in the thinking part of my brain and in my subconscious.

Spoilers start now.

The main reveal of the book is that my MSC is able to feel the emotions of other people. Therefore, his ability to pinpoint, identify, and verbalize other people's emotions enables my other characters to acknowledge what's really going behind their interactions (or lack thereof). This in turn allows them to recognize choices they didn't know they were making, or that were available to them to make.

This is especially important to my MC, who lives an extreme pressure-cooker kind of life. Some fairly early scenes (I've been uneasy about these because it's a little uncomfortable knowing people will be reading them) show him teetering on the edge of totally losing it. I've also already got some rough placeholders sketched out for the ending sequence where he really does totally lose it and goes berserk (those don't make me uneasy; I like those).

The reason he totally loses it is because he's pushed past his limits. No, scratch that--he's already living past his limits. What happens is that he finally gets completely shoved off the emotional cliff.

The reason he's been living past his limits is that, over and over again, he's had to make decisions when all his options are terrible and soul-scarring. The only way he's been able to handle it each time and stay functional is by just shutting down another part of himself and moving on anyway. Everyone in the book is like that, because they have to be--but since he's the leader he's done it most of all, and to an internally disfiguring degree.

I think his problem by the ending sequence, around the time he loses it, is that he's shut himself down and cut himself off so many times that he's hit the line now; he's on the verge of severing all connection to other human beings, and to his own humanity.

And I think the MSC is the one slender thread that offers my MC a road back to being human and having the things that are meaningful to him (the MC).

Why? Because the MSC can say, "This is how you feel," when the MC has been steadily according his own emotions less and less value. He's had to, because in practical terms they hamper his ability to think clearly when making decisions, and they are often dangerous to him and to the people he's leading. Most of his emotions have generally made his life hell. Still, he needs them if he wants to be a human being and not a survival machine.

So all through the book, as I continue working on scenes in the MSC storyline, I need to be mindful of the MSC's insight, of what he intuits naturally about people's emotions without even being aware that he does so, and of how that comes out in scene. And as everything else in my MC's life gets worse and worse--including his relationship with the MSC--this one thread of connecting with the MSC should steadily, quietly build. It probably needs to get to the point where the MC needs this aspect of the MSC, without even realizing that he does so.

Then, at the end, his final choice (whatever that may be) should probably reflect, or at least include, the realization and decision: I need this part of me, I want this part of me, and it's important enough that I am willing to _____ in order to have it.

I know I have previously traveled down a similar line of thought to all this, but now I "get" it in a specific and useful way--I get what it means in concrete terms, in terms of writing scenes and shaping the story.

And now that I wrote all this out, I see that I was wrong when I said it didn't seem like a big thematic issue. It is. It ties back to the whole "value of mercy" thing, and the violence-via-video-games thing, and the god and beast thing. So yeah, it's a big deal.

Yesterday, worked on the first scene of chapter 11, trying to reorganize and reslant it to fit its new place in the book. Today I was stuck in a doctor's waiting room for an hour, and used the time to make (more) notes about the rest of chapter 11 and all of chapter 12.

My notes for chapter 12 indicate that it's going to be boring plotwise. Since it's also coming right after another chapter that's boring plotwise, I am actively, mindfully fighting my urge to complacently tell myself it's not really going to be boring plotwise, it's just going to be internal conflict rather than external. I've worked too hard on this ms to start falling into self-indulgence by telling myself fairy tales about how the reader might be on the edge of his/her seat, eagerly turning pages to find out if character X got the hearth cleaned up, or if character Y got that sticker out of his foot.

So I was trying to think of ways to pump up chapter 12 a little, keep the tension from sagging too much. I came up with a few little things that might help, but I won't know if they're really going to work until I try them. They're small in-scene references to some of the plot threads that I've left hanging; I hope they'll indicate that the MC is still worrying about them and remind the reader to worry about them, too. Also I think I'm going to try inserting a scenelet where the MC sees two of the guys he wants to kill, and he has a clear shot at them, but he hesitates for various reasons and loses the opportunity. I like the idea of this because later those two guys are going to poke character Y's eye out, and I think the reader will be even more upset knowing that it could have been prevented if the MC had acted in this earlier scene.

Like I said, there's no way to tell if any of this will work until I try it. It's mostly an experiment, and I'm interested to see what happens.

One big problem that has been nagging and nagging and nagging at me is that the book needs a scene where my MC and the main secondary character clearly bond--where the reader totally gets the fact that the secondary character is important to the well-being of my MC, even though he (the secondary character) appears to be expendable.* I have not yet figured out what that scene needs to be. I do have a scene very late in the book where the secondary character assures the MC of something my MC desperately needs to hear. I don't know if that will work as the point I need to make, and I also wonder if it's too late in the story to do that job properly. So I guess I'm writing this down right now to make sure the back of my mind knows about the problem, and is working on it.




*Quick mini-advisorish-explanation: the reason this scene is needed is that a book's character/thematic story--the thing that gives it depth--is like an arc where the character starts off one way, and then scene by scene over the course of the book is driven to change, and then, by the end of the book, is able to do/understand/acknowledge something he wouldn't have been able to do/understand/acknowledge at the beginning. Most of the scenes in the book will establish a clear point about, or make a clear step along, that arc. In my ms, the main secondary character is the catalyst for change in my MC's life. He's the reason my MC starts seeing things a little differently and is able to choose differently at the end of the book. In order for the end of the book to be satisfying, I need a scene where the reader strongly "gets" that this secondary character is providing a new way of thinking or of seeing things for my MC. If I don't have that, the book will be flat.

Blah blah blah. Sometimes I get sick of the sound of my own voice.

No time to work on my own stuff. However, it seems that the back of my head has been working busily, unbeknownst to me, because suddenly a whole rash of tied-together ideas came out while I had Tyson out on a nice four-mile walk/sniff-fest. Basically the whole line of thought just involves one new not-very-exciting scene and an unrelated old scene that still serves the same purpose it did before. However, multiple layers and depth are suddenly piling on both of them.

When I got home I jotted down everything I thought I'd need to remember (squirrel! flour! composite bow! head-on-a-pike!) when I pick up the ms again. That could be tomorrow. If I get to work right now and put in some long hard hours today to get other obligations completed.

In other news, the w-f-h ms I did last year or whenever it was--the one that taught me so much about fight scenes and writing from action/plot--is not going to be published, because the series was canceled before it began. It's too bad, because I ended up liking the character a lot, and would have liked to see how the book read in print. However, I got paid up front, I learned a ton, and it was somebody else's idea, so it's not on the list of things I'm losing sleep over.

And now, back to work.

Major, major sketching-out, here.

Shifted the stripping-of-corpse to chapter 13, which meant moving the infected foot up to chapter 12, all of which allowed the shoe-incited discussion to fall into place in 14. This allowed me to go over the whole ms again from chapter 9 on, getting everything more firmly settled in the right places--and yeah, I think this is going to work.

I've got chapters in mind all the way through 26, and then there'll be a few chapters where the climactic conflict takes place. I've now got a general idea of how the previous chapters carry that "beast" idea forward into this final sequence so that the MC makes his choice (whatever that is). I've also now got a thread of "Luck" that popped up a couple times, which with a little attention will fall into place to make the ending tighter and more satisfying.

I'd already sketched out the last few lines in a draft that brought tears to my eyes even though it was crappy and rough. I blew off the tear-bringing effect at the time because it could easily have been a fluke. But today I rewrote those lines more deliberately, putting a little more thought behind them--and they made me tear up again, only stronger. That's a great, great sign.

Note to self re: Beast or God again

"But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god."

Was watching FullMetal Brotherhood this morning (it seems to be nearing its conclusion), and was struck by a comment from Roy Mustang. He said that he needs Lt. Hawkeye in order to survive, because she keeps him from being reckless.

This got me to thinking about my WIP. One idea I'm loosely exploring is why you may be better off (in a survival/subsistence situation) with a mutually dependent community of caring people around you, rather than being entirely out for yourself--either needing no one, or aligning with a group whose members use each other on a strictly practical basis. I've been thinking mostly in terms of shared burdens, emotional bonds that make people protect each other and work together more efficiently to survive.

But now I'm also thinking that if you have other people around you whom you care about and trust, and who are equally invested in you, then you've also provided yourself with outside context for your own behavior and choices. Without that community you're essentially functioning in a vacuum, and are more likely to lose a sense of proportion about whether you're acting wisely or not. The people around you can keep you grounded by saying, "Hey, you need to calm down," or "That's a little reckless, isn't it?" or "Yes, you're completely justified in worrying about this situation," or perhaps most importantly, "Remember what's really important to you."

I'm thinking maybe a man who has no need of society because he is sufficient for himself isn't necessarily that way because he's a beast. Maybe sometimes trying to be that way is what turns him into a beast.

That actually dovetails very nicely with what's going on in the book, and I think it also may help me pin down the exact actions that'll take place in the climactic scene where my MC makes his story-capping choice. Whatever that is.

Hmm, so I'm thinking that every writer may have a different base "layer" that they tend to start with when writing a scene. Some people tend to need a plot to build from, some need a setting; I generally just need characters or even just a strong feeling from a character I don't know yet. If I think about it, I see that I most often start with a base layer of either internal thought or of dialog. Then I flesh out and layer on physical grounding, setting, and last of all, plot. (not all the time, but more than other ways of working.)*

So it occurs to me that this may be something to consider, when I get to a "stuck" place. Maybe mixing it up a little and starting with different layers than I'm used to can help when I get in a writing rut. Like, say, if something's not coming easily, maybe I could back off and approach it from establishing setting first, or getting a physical bead on where everybody is and what they're doing. Or maybe I could start with an action.

I mean, I do do all these things, but maybe I could do it more deliberately sometimes to see what happens--to see if it gets the story moving and helps me reconnect. Something to think about, anyway.



*When I work, the thematic stuff may already be close to the surface in that initial layer of internal thought and non-plot-driven dialog, just because internal thought and non-plot-driven dialog are already halfway tapped into the character's growth and change. Something to think about is whether plot-driven writers tend to have to work harder to get to that layer of thematic depth and resonance than someone who starts closer to character. Is the thematic engine of a story as visibly close to the surface, if your mind works first in terms of "what's happening"? Is it harder not to lose track of? Maybe not; maybe I just have trouble recognizing theme in plot because of my own writing weaknesses.

Ha! I was doing more organizational thinking, streamlining my notes and listing all the points I need to make in this vast desert area of the ms. Suddenly I remembered this old, old throwaway piece I wrote in one of my very early beginnings. It's just a tossed-off 100-word bit in the middle of other stuff, telling how my MC saw a guy fall to his death once. I always liked that bit, so even though it didn't do anything and distracted the reader, I left it in for far too long before I cut it. It's been gone for a long time now.

Now I'm going to develop it here in the Sahara and see what happens if one of my characters plummets mid-scene. That might keep things interesting. The idea seems to have some heft to it, too, because I like how they'd have to get his battered body home (it resonates thematically), and then afterwards there'd be one less person to keep track of in these horrendous six-person scenes that are killin' me, I tell ya, killin' me. It would also allow me to naturally throw characters together where they'd say stuff I need said, and it would also set up deepening relationships, plus it can be used to ratchet up the MC's suspicions about the main secondary character.

Some writers work best--and believe it is best--to delete old stuff in order to free and clear your mind. To which I say: Are you in-f#cking-sane???? I never throw anything away if I can help it.

So anyway, that's what I'm going to try, and we'll see how it works out.

Am trying to get a grip on larger picture of ms using sticky notes on the inside of a cardboard box, because a poster board wasn't large enough. I've got the end idea I need to come around to* written in front of me so I don't lose sight of it. I've got a different color of sticky note for each thread I'm trying to deal with. Each sticky note contains one scene I'm pretty sure I want to write.

It looks like there are two main threads to be woven together. One follows a certain secondary character and mostly appears to be plotty stuff. Another follows a different secondary character and mostly appears to be character-theme-ish quiet scenes. Hmm.

It looks to me like there's a turning point, and after that there won't be room for much of anything except plotty stuff. That might be the last third or so of the book. Not sure. But once that turning point happens, the MC is going to be obsessed and unable to think of anything else.

However, if there's mostly only quiet stuff for a huge chunk of the ms before that, I've got a problem: sagging story.

One thing I've wanted to do since I started this ms was to use the idea of six bullets as a ticking-clock device to pull the reader through. However, the way it stands now, four of the six bullets are fired in the last third of the book, which is already going to be moving quickly (if the story really does go this direction). So...I think I can move one of the bullets up somehow, and not lose anything. I think it can go in a third colored thread, which belongs to yet another character/storyline. Except I don't know how this third thread/storyline fits in with the others yet. However, I do know it's part of the middle, and it's not quiet, so that's good.

So, hmm, hmm. Right now I could write out a couple of scenes to feel out some stuff, or I could freewrite a secondary character's backstory, because I'm going to need to have that firmly in the back of my head in order to write the middle.

Oh, yo. Revisions on w-f-h just popped up in my inbox. Well, there's no way I'm going to put all my lovely different-colored sticky notes aside just yet, mere hours after I got them out. I've skimmed the e-mail, and will digest its contents while proceeding on dystopian ms for the rest of today's writing time. Tomorrow I will look at the commented-on w-f-h ms itself, egad. By then my loins should be fully girded.

Okay, so anyway. Not to put too fine a point on it, I need to figure out when my MC has sex with a certain character before I can understand how the third colored thread weaves in with the other two. And the problem I'm having there is that my MC needs to visit the same place twice, when he doesn't actually go there very often, and only one of the visits is exciting, plot-wise. The other's boring...except for the sex. Only he won't know he's going to have sex till he gets there, so there's nothing to compel the reader. Therefore: sagging story.


*Or rather, two ideas: mercy binds the group and strengthens it; mercy to oneself is necessary as well. These are the things that drive the book, underlie all the character arcs, and pull everything together.

Very busy. Zero time for my own writing. However, today I woke up having decided that when I go back to the former GN, I'm going to reslant it toward the idea of wanting something.

"Some say that the most beautiful thing on this dark earth is a host of horsemen; some say an army of infantry; others say a fleet of ships. But I say it is that which you desire."

I think I'm going to pull the whole thing around from not knowing what you want to not even being allowed to know what you want, to knowing, wanting, and taking it.

This ms has been niggling at the back of my mind, making me want to work on it, probably because I've been doing so much big-picture organizational thinking lately. The former GN is mostly about ultra tiny detail and it's not very practical.

No time right now, though. Off to other work.

Deadliest Warrior is having Attila the Hun vs. Alexander the Great. Oh, happy day!

Circumstances forced me to finish and send the dystopian synopsis late last week, so I did that. Otherwise, I'm just thinking about the ms at odd hours, and today a nice meaningful chunk of backstory came to me. I'm supposed to be working on getting the first few chapters, maybe 30-50 pages, together for agent (I've got about 80 pages, but they're not in order). However, I can't figure out what needs to be in the front of the book till I understand more about the middle.

As far as the end, I'm feeling more and more like I want to know the point of the book--I want to have one strong thought about how the MC changes--and I don't yet. But I probably don't have to have that, to get the first 30-50 pages. I vaguely know what's going on, and that ought to be enough for practical purposes, for a while longer at least.

Here's what interests me about this new WIP: the idea of mercy, compassion, empathy. Why are those inherently good things? What if they're liabilities and have a direct, negative impact on your own survival? Why would it be a good thing to have them, in that case? Is there something about them that deserves being nursed along, even when there's no apparent upside to having them, and many clear downsides?

Was thinking about The Hunger Games. I haven't read the second one, only the first. One thing I noticed about it--can't remember if I've mentioned this before--was what I think of as the Disneyfication of violence. I don't know if that's the right way to use the word Disneyfication or not, but what I mean is that--to me--the MC never really kills anybody in morally ambiguous circumstances. She kills from afar, she kills out of mercy, she kills accidentally. I'm thinking the only person she kills for "real" is a heinous, cruel, bad guy of a murderer that the reader wants dead. There's always some reason for moral disconnect, so that she doesn't seem like a bad person. The Games are constructed so that (you'd think) she's going to have to choose, at some point, between killing a stranger up close yet impersonally--looking them in the eyes and taking their life, like "Sorry, bub, I don't know you but I'm going to slice your throat and watch you die"--or being killed herself. But that never quite happens.

At first I wondered if this aspect of HG was because the MC was a female and girls aren't allowed to be openly violent and must have extenuating circumstances--but then I decided no, it's probably just because the book is for YA. Younger YA, if you ask me. People may think it's upper YA because it's violent, but the tone and this Disneyfication thing makes it feel younger to me. And I know "Disneyfication" sounds bad here, but I don't mean it in a bad way. It's appropriate for the age group. The book brings up ideas about violence but eases the reader into thinking about them without getting too heavy.

I was thinking about this because yesterday I was at Best Buy with son #2 as he bought BioShock 1 & 2, and the register had a block on it that wouldn't let the cashier proceed until son #2 had shown ID proving that he was at least 17. I hadn't seen this block before; not sure why, because the cashier said it's not new. I was thinking about books for YA and how you don't necessarily need a register block for them, because you could never get a book through mainstream publishers if it had the stuff some of those video games have in them.*

I don't have anything to say about ratings or censorship, just that maybe there's a gap between the real everyday world of average American teens and the world that makes books available to them. In the real everyday average world you can turn on your TV and chainsaw a guy's skull open, animation-wise. And it's a good thing. You get a sense of accomplishment from doing it. Somewhere a group of parents or educators or politicians are gathering round a table to commiserate on how awful it is that people are exposing children and teens to animated violence, but that's got nothing to do with the everyday fact that you accomplished something today by using your chainsaw to get past that guy and move on to your checkpoint.

Books are written by adults, and they go through a whole series of people gathered round tables before they get on the shelves, and then they go through even more rounds before they might make it into the hands of a YA reader. So, you know, it's no wonder most YAs don't read for fun. They never did, but they do it even less now. If you spent the afternoon ripping out hearts and exploding somebody's intestines and in doing so saved an entire world, then most books might seem like something your grandma wrote.

I don't have any point to make about all this. I think I'm just working at the problem of how far I want to go with the violence in this ms, morally speaking. How deep do I want to dig into moral ambiguity? For myself, I'd probably want to go pretty far. But how far do I want to go for the reader? Maybe not so far. On one hand I think, "You know, somebody who's spent their day chainsawing skulls probably needs to spend some time considering what that really means." But on the other hand I think, "Nobody who spends their days chainsawing skulls is ever going to see this book, and the ones who will see it are a little wimpy about that kind of thing, and need to be coddled a bit." Will have to think about it.

Okay, wimpy's probably the wrong word. Maybe sensitive would be better. Or humane. Or enlightened. There. Now everybody can feel better.



*Some books veer into shock-related territory, but as far as I can tell it's nowhere near the degree of video games.

I didn't do a very good job of forcing myself to stay on that problem spot yesterday, but today I bore down and got through most of it. That's not to say it works. Just like I thought, it makes the emotional story veer off on a tangent, and I don't know how to bring it back. But anyway, I got the basics of the first problem part down. The thing is, I know this is going to happen two more times--I'll insert a specific tragic event that has to go in there, and it'll shift the story away from its true emphasis. So I'll have to pay close attention to any fix I figure out, because the story's going to need to be patched up at least twice more.

I don't like to use the word "theme," but that's what this is. The story has always had one basic main idea I want to explore. But these scenes of personal loss are so strong (in theory, anyway; I don't know how they actually read right now) that they sweep away everything in their path. However, they're not the kind of events you can deal with offstage or offhandedly, either; they are a big deal. Ugh.

The only fix I can think of right now is to show the passage of time before and after each event, to kind of tamp things down and bring everything back to normal. I don't know if that's enough, though. I'm afraid it's not--I have a very uncomfortable feeling that it's not--but we'll see.

I thought I would have a good amount of writing time today...but I didn't. I ended up staying in the same few pages, reworking a word here, a line there--then getting interrupted. A thought here, a paragraph there--and getting interrupted again. Etc., etc. I was going to work some tonight, but decided to go to yoga in an attempt to stave off the looming Tension Headache from Hell.

Usually while all the other people in yoga class are clearing their minds as per instructions, I'm thinking about what I'm going to eat when class is over. Tonight, however, I thought about my WIP and the few pages I worked on, and saw kind of what I need to do, big picture-wise, to smooth out the flow so that those few pages connect with my sketchy middle. I saw that those few pages start teaching the MC that she has to control and deny herself so that the men in her life don't have to control or deny themselves. I don't show her figuring that out, though. I'm not sure exactly where she'd go, "Okay, I have to start shutting myself down now." I need to find that exact point, I guess.

Then later in the book this gets worse and worse, till she's so completely shut down she's not even human anymore. I know I show some of that happening so that the reader feels it. But I'm not consistent about it all the way through the book.

More interruptions, argh. I give up. I hope I can think about this some more tomorrow.

I've been working on several things that need to be done, like many pieces of paperwork for new teaching job, plus a lecture, plus the potential w-f-h thing. On the w-f-h thing, I decided to think out the whole book and sketch a sort of proposal that shows what I'm thinking, so the publisher and I can see if we're on the same page. This involves some hard core braiding of plot with character, so I feel that it's going to be very good for me. I also intend to make an outline, because I have to make sure the story has tension and hooks--those are the specs--and to demonstrate in the "proposal" that they will be there. Whether or not I can manage this, it's an excellent exercise for me, and definitely a stretch.

Haven't worked on my own ms in a few days. Today I watched reruns of America's Next Top Model and tried to think a little during commercials, because I feel a bit overwhelmed. I feel I need a stronger connecting thread that runs through the story from start to finish--something that pulls all the very different sections together, something that makes a point that's memorable. Right now I think each section makes a slightly different point, so they don't build to an ending where you want a certain thing to happen. You need to want something for the character, by the end. Not like a Perils of Pauline ending, though; you need to want the character to do a certain something. I need to get a clearer picture of what it is I'm supposed to make the reader want my MC to do. That's the connecting thread that's weak--so weak I keep losing sight of it. I need to find it and draw it out--strongly.

Today's approach worked out pretty well. So far, anyway. I made a list of the main ideas/plot points that belong where the hole in the middle is. Then I moved the pieces that are in the hole right now (about seven pages worth of chunks ranging from a few words to a third of a page), grouping them according to which part of the list they belong under.

As I was doing that I saw chunks that were notes and explanations to myself about theme (what I want the book to say), so I added "theme" to the list of main ideas/plots points and moved all those together, too. Somehow as I was doing this, I saw that I could use some of the theme chunks to end the previous section and make it stronger (it has been just fading out because I didn't know where I was heading). From there I started to see how the middle might fall into line and make sense on a thematic, character, and plot level. I think it helped seeing that extremely annoying blog entry yesterday, because my mind is on readers who need things spelled out. I've been reading too much Heian literature, which is crazy because they don't use names, or care about time and order of events, and they don't like to say anything straight out when they can hint at it or just leave it blank. And I mean that literally; I know I exaggerate sometimes for effect, but really Heian literature leaves most stuff out. The degree of trust in the reader is astronomical. And I think that's very cool, and it's definitely influencing me, but I'm writing a thousand years later in a more specific language to a different potential audience, so I have to remember that spelling things out is good. Compared to Heian writing, anyway.

I hope that I can move on from here and get the middle at least sketched out. There's no telling, though. Sometimes you look at something that made complete sense the day before, and suddenly you can't understand what your line of thought was. I hope that doesn't happen with this.

I was a bum all day yesterday, writing-wise. Today I woke up and decided to go back and turn a fairly major character back into a minor one. Since I've gone through the Menelaus section and tried to figure out its arc, I'm now thinking that the story may be simpler and clearer if that character is downgraded. So...I'm going to have to cut a lot of stuff, all the way through. I'll start working on that today.

The reasons I'm thinking of cutting this character are:

1) The end of the Menelaus section is confusing to me; I can't quite get a feel for how events build.* If I take this piece out--although I like some of it very, very much--the section may suddenly make sense.

2) It's causing me grief to try to get this character introduced properly in the beginning without making the story drag (even more than it already does).

3) I'm at a point where I'm trying to think "What does this story want to say to the reader?" Not to me, to the reader. That means all my personal blah-blah-blah needs to be secondary to clarity: What do I want the reader to take away at the end of the book? I'm thinking this character's stuff isn't needed to give that message, and in fact it's clouding the points the story could be making.

3) I think I might be able to give more power to the stuff that's already there without this thread. I think it may be diluting what's there.

So, will see what happens today, whether this makes things better or worse.


*In fact, I seem to be using this character's thread as an excuse to add stuff I like that doesn't have anything to do with the story.

Okay, I think something that would be extremely helpful is if, while I'm digging into the nitty-gritty details of a page or scene, and while I'm trying to smooth out the series of scenes in a particular section--if while I'm doing all that, I can keep a finger on the pulse of the entire thematic arc, the big main idea of the whole book, then I'll have some direction and focus and not get lost and confused so often.

I read over the first section, and there it was clearly before me--the main idea beaming over my head like a glowing celestial compass--and I tweaked a couple of things so that section came around nicely and made its point and I'd say it's in pretty good shape (this is the first time I've ever said that). So I've got a bead on this project now, I have a grip on it...as long as I don't move forward. Because I know as soon as I dig into the next part, that grip is going to start sliding away.

This will not do. I can't just reread the beginning for momentum every time I start to work, because it'll become meaningless within a day or two, the words having embedded themselves in my brain. I don't know that I can just put the overall big idea on a sticky note to refer back to, because the idea sort of develops and grows and is explained as the story progresses. I guess I could try that, though. Maybe I will.

Finally sent in sample chapter, two days past the deadline I set. It just sucked so bad, it would have been unprofessional to put it on someone's desk and expect them to spend work time reading and responding to me about it. I still am not thrilled with it, but it's readable. There's a point in w-f-h and in auditions where you have to just say "scr*w it," and send it in anyway, but I'll be d*mned if I'll send in something I know is a painful slog of a read.

So anyway, while I was working on that I was thinking about its structure. At first I had an opening scene, then a lengthy flashback, then back to real time, picking up where the first scene left off. Discussion with editor enlightened me to the fact that they want plot more than character--so I cut the flashback entirely. Now it's all real time, very short, and I just characterized like I was told to characterize, without trying to understand anything.* But as I was going over and over it, trying to get it readable, I thought, you know, I could actually start the whole thing with the second scene, just skip the first one entirely. I didn't, but I thought that I could have.

The whole thing was actually pretty interesting, because I had to sit down and think closely about what the reader needs from a beginning--and this is absolutely related to my difficulties with the swordfighting ms. In the w-f-h sample ** I first started with character/thematic problem then went into the plot problem. Then for revision I trimmed the heck out of character and took out the thematic problem--but I still started with a little scene to set up the character. If I started with the plot problem, to me there would be nothing to get hold of in the second chapter, because you wouldn't have a clue who the MC is or why you should care. Also, the first chapter hook is going to be undercut and disappear right at the beginning of chapter 2. Without something else to care about, why should anybody keep reading? I probably wouldn't. I felt like the chapter needed something else besides plot hooks laid as a foundation, in order to support 200 more pages of book. I could be wrong, of course, because I'm not a plotter, but that's how I see it at the moment (note to self: reread The Da Vinci Code).

In the middle of working on all this I was thinking about the swordfighting ms, and how it's okay now, but it doesn't grab me. I thought, that's because it doesn't start with The Problem anymore. It used to start with The Problem and was real grabby--but the ms was dead because the reader hadn't connected with the characters. The Problem doesn't actually come up till well into the story. By that time there's no way to get in the masses of characterization and motivation that make the reader (or me, anyway) connect emotionally.

In essence, the problem and the story don't start at the same time.

I thought, okay, I know other books don't always have story and problem starting together. I haven't had time to think about it much, but Lord of the Rings immediately comes to mind. It starts with Bilbo's party. (Doesn't it? No time to check.)

However--pulling myself back into line here--it doesn't matter if other writers can do it. What matters is whether I can, or whether it works for this ms. And to me, something feels like it ain't quite right. Something feels like it could be better. So what I think I want to do is play around with time jumps, integrating the old plot-hook version with the newer, more developed version, to see if there's a way to have problem and story at the same time. I'm well aware that this may turn out to be an extremely unproductive tack to take, so I'll just putz around with it and quit if it starts feeling too weird.



*Speaking frankly, here. I've decided that although it's always unwise to blog frankly in this biz, I'm not going to lie about writing process. Period. The reason being that--in this biz--you don't sell your soul all at once, but tiny pieces of it, a dime and nickel at a time. My soul is definitely for sale, but only certain parts of it, and I must sell it mindfully, keeping firm lines as to what's up for grabs and what's not. Otherwise, one day I'll wake up to find that I hate writing and want to quit.

**My agent says it's not w-f-h, and it's not, technically, but I don't know what else to call it. It's not packaging, either.

Printed out the first 65 pages, but didn't read past the first page because the first page sucks. Really bad. The first page is the prologue/frame before the real story starts. It needs to be right, or it needs to be gone.

So I sat down to rewrite it, thinking, "Okay, what is the point here?"

Basically, I decided, the point of this page is to lay out the reason for the book. As I tried to fix it, I reminded myself that the end frame needs to come back around to this same point. I also realized that I need to come back to it in the middle, too--that I went off course while dabbling around in the middle because I didn't have this point in mind.

I also get off course in this particular middle spot because if I focus on theme, I lose story, and on top of that I already don't have a good grasp of characterization here because the MC's experiences are so far from my own. I'm wondering if maybe I just need to get the basic skeleton of theme down, and worry about the rest later. Getting it right may take help from outside readers who can tell me what they're missing or what they don't understand or what they don't find believable.

Anyway, so I worked this morning and fixed the first page (for today, anyway) and then moved to page 60 and started reworking from there. When I get tired of that, I can start reading the printout if I want to.