For some reason I woke up this morning and decided I had to cut the baby again. I don't know why I thought of this, but it suddenly came into my head that the narrative is a straight line and somehow the baby complicates or deviates too much. Right before the baby enters, the story is focused on subtle abuse in a relationship, and it rises to a clear mini-climax where the MC is changed. So it seems like maybe I'm switching gears with the baby, like I made a point and now am diluting it by heading off in another direction.

However, yesterday I also added back in one of the characters I'd cut, only in a smaller and different way. The character isn't so much of a character anymore as a little tiny peak of plot--a feeling I want to bring in. There's no development or backstory and I don't have to carry the character all the way through the book and juggle him with other plot threads and other characters' entrances and exits. So, we'll see. There's no telling if he'll end up staying or going.

So today I'll be interested to see how many pages I lose when the baby's gone. And I'll have to move some other stuff I'd tied into the baby--must see where that can go. I hope it can go somewhere.

Worked on former GN today; may be able to work more later, but I'm not counting on it.

I was thinking more about the sample and how I moved the timeline around. If that actually works--if it's readable and smooth and the time jumps don't lose the reader--it does a great favor to the ms as far as pacing and tension. What it looks like right now is this:

1. Present time:
Intro MC
Set scene
Set her problem (boyfriend dumped her; she's sad)
End mid-scene on a conclusion the MC draws about emotion
Break (white space)

2. Flashback:
Start with general explanation about emotion and relationship with boyfriend
Move into scene where MC was dumped
End on action.
Break (white space)

3. Present time:
Set scene again, in very first line.
Scene picks up essentially where we were before flashback.
Stay in scene, hit the plot points and the hook (dead body!).
End chapter.


So what I'm wondering is whether there's something to take from this and apply to my swordfighting ms. I think that ms might work okay the way it is now, but it doesn't snap, crackle, and pop. It's okay...but I wonder if there's a way to have my cake and eat it too. I wonder if there's a way to keep the hook-y first chapter that threw me totally off course because it wasn't at all tied to the emotional story. Is there a way to somehow mess around with time so that the reader gets both hook and backstory at once?

One problem is that the swordfighting ms needs to be accessible to slightly younger readers than my upper YAs. That makes jumping around in time harder to do. Hmm. Double hmm. Plus it's one thing to have a single flashback, but what if the backstory is just as big as the present-day-hook-y story? Hmm, must think about structure and format.

I remember reading Rats Saw God a long time ago. Some other people I knew had read it and liked it, but others didn't because the time changes confused them and they found it hard to keep up. I believe--too lazy to go look--that past and present were indicated by dates at the beginning of diary sections (or whatever they were) and also by font--perhaps italic vs. regular?

I had no problem reading RSG, because I knew ahead of time to take a second to reorient myself at the beginning of each section. Obviously you can't count on readers knowing they need to do that--or even being willing to; it is asking a bit much to require them to work at reading your book. So...can you make the ms do the work for them? What if you make it blindingly clear that the reader needs to reorient? Can you smooth time jumps by upping the clarity of your clues? You can change fonts and put a heading. But I'm thinking maybe you could pretty much force them to reorient if you use stronger means. Like spelling out the headings--for example, instead of putting a date, put "From So-and-so's diary."

Or...instead of having a break and font change, you could start a new chapter with each font change. For good measure, you could also title the chapters with a clue/indicator.

You could even go so far as to stop, have a page with just a heading/title, then pick up with the time jump on the following page.

But the real question is, can this work without screwing up the pacing, without losing tension, without coming off as jerky and disorienting?

Finally got the sample sent off. I realized at what felt like the last moment that probably it'd be best to take the big, obvious hook from the synopsis I was given, and use that to end the first chapter. Because otherwise the story would be heading off in a misleading direction.

The problem was that this meant not going in chronological order. Shades of my swordfighting ms! I immediately had flashbacks of the horror that came from mismatched plot and emotional story. The dead ends, the lack of connection with the reader, the wasted time. And here was the same problem staring me right in the face: if I skipped the beginning and started with hook/action, I'd be playing catchup from page one and might not ever get everything working in concert.

I tried to feel it out (hard to do, on a deadline), and what I ended up doing was starting in scene leading up to the hook, and then I plunked a big old flashback in the middle. In the first chapter. Egad. I cut all other references to subplots down to almost nothing (they kept trying to clarify themselves, but that early on they just muddy the waters) and tried to smooth it out and make it work. There's no telling if it really does work, because I'd only know that if I let it sit a while before I looked at it again. Anyhoo, that's done.

I got in about an hour of work on Friday, but yesterday--when I should have been working all day and gotten a ton of writing done--I avoided writing totally. It was stupid to allow myself to do that, and shamefully unprofessional since I have a deadline.

I did, however, manage to see all four stages of Ninja Warrior. I've only been able to catch episodes with the first stage before, but with concentrated effort yesterday, I watched all the way to the end of one of the contests. I'm not sure why this feels like an accomplishment. I guess because I've been wondering what the second, third, and fourth stages look like. Answer: crazy hard. Almost all upper body. And hand and finger strength, because they do a lot of moving from obstacle to obstacle while danging from fingertips. And the last stage? Never watch it if you have bad memories of having to climb a rope in gym class.

Now to work. I had an idea that adds almost nothing to this sample chapter, but could help shape the entire ms if I ended up with the job. It has to do with this:

http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/emotional_manipulation.htm

Today's WIP problem is one of modern sensibilities running smack into history and bringing everything to a halt. The problem is: rapists = bad. No question about that. However, you find plenty of Greek heroes and gods raping left and right. In the Bronze Age the winners of wars killed all the men among their enemy, then took all the women and kept them as slaves for textile production and for bedmates. The women didn't have any choice. And since only men wrote the stories (or histories), we don't know what the women thought about it. The overriding impression I get is that they just endured--but again, all we have is what men said about it. I was looking at a recent book by a woman arguing that the words "seduction" and "rape" were interchangeable in Greek myths, but--again--what she's looking at was all written by men, who probably were more comfortable believing that women didn't mind. (Plus, she narrowed down her thesis to leave out all the myths that didn't agree, then went back and mentioned the few outside the narrowing-down that did agree, just to shore up her point. IMO, this is an example of why you always have to read nonfiction with skeptical eye.).*

I've been struck by Pepys' (17th century England) ability to force himself on women, and by his apparent inability to care how they felt about it. There's this self-centeredness to him, like if he enjoys what he's doing, what the women think about it is inconsequential. And the richer he gets, the more he seems to feel that all women can be had, if he just cares to put forth the effort (g*d knows even he admits he flat-out raped Mrs. Bagwell). I see the same self-centeredness in the Greek warriors taking their prizes back to their tents.

And I saw the same thing in Genji (10th/11th century Japan), over and over, but most of all at the end of chapter nine, where Genji finally consummates his relationship with Murasaki. And that's just creepy, because he first saw her when she was maybe ten years old, and he took her off without permission and groomed her to be the kind of woman he wanted. Then he decides it's time to do the deed, and I don't know how old she is by then, but it's barely out of childhood. She's always thought he was a dear friend and companion and playmate, and then one night he just does it. Typically, we don't get to hear about it, just the aftermath, when Genji has left and little Murasaki stays in bed all day and everyone assumes she's feeling sick:

"That this was what Genji had so long been wanting came to her as a complete surprise and she could not think why he should regard the unpleasant thing that had happened last night as in some way the beginning of a new and more intimate friendship between them."**

Remember, he's the master, the boss of the house, an important man whom nobody can gainsay. So anyway, when he comes back, she hides under the covers and stays there and won't talk to him, but he doesn't quite get it, and tries to cajole her. When he finally pulls the covers away, he finds that she's so upset she's worked herself into a sweat. He tries giving her gifts, then pretending to be angry, but "he found even her rebuffs in a curious way endearing." This goes on as he completes the process of marrying her (sleeping with her that night was the first step). She has zero choice in the matter, and it doesn't matter one iota how she felt about sex. It's very clear she didn't like it, and that he doesn't care whether she did, and to me he doesn't seem likely to care in future, either. All that's important to him is how she interacts with him before and after, and how it impacts his daily pleasure in her company (she'd better start being nice to him, or else she's history, is the feeling I get).

Notice that this book was written by a woman. She lived in a society where men could do as they pleased and women were their cloistered subjects, and to me, every page drips with the assumption that men had the right. To me, Murasaki (the author, not the character; they have the same name) felt that the way to tell a good man was by how generous he was about financially supporting all the women in his life, and by how artistically he went about his love affairs. To me, this is a clue about how women might view rape and forced sex, in a world where men could see only as far as the ends of their, er, noses. Beyond their own pleasure, men had no need to consider. Beyond that, things might get a little uncomfortable. So they didn't go there, either emotionally or mentally. Conveniently, then, they had no need for a conscience, the same way you don't have to have empathy for animals if you believe their only reason for existence is for the use and convenience of mankind. And if the men essentially dictated the foundations of right and wrong, then the society as a whole had no conscience or empathy. The entire culture, the entire world, didn't go there.

That's why--if the entire world around you views rape as something that just kinda happens, like blisters or dandruff--I'm wondering if you (as a woman) are going to perhaps take it in stride in a way modern women can't even begin to conceive.

All this to say, my stumbling block is that I've got some good guys who perform a retaliation molestation. The point is that women were property, and if some guy came and messed with your property, you went and messed with his right back. Back then, you could do this and still be a good guy. The books from those times and cultures are full of good guys who molested and raped women. My guess is that there was just a big blank spot in the guys, in this one place where people today have empathy and conscience. And I don't know how to handle this. By all rights, this action ought to make my characters bad guys. How do I keep them good guys? Do I let them have a glimmer of modern conscience? If so, how do I do that without being forced and unnatural? Even more important, how do I do it without being author-intrusive and didactic? Because if I do that, I might as well hand Helen of Troy a sword and let her go out and kick Achilles @ss and win Hector's body back single-handed.

Am I wrong, though? If something's morally wrong now but was acceptable practice long ago, does that mean it was always wrong? What if it was more than acceptable long ago--what if it was honorable?



*And blogs, too. Including this one.

**This is from the Arthur Waley translation.

I only had an hour to work on my WIP today, and I ended up concentrating on a couple of paragraphs in the middle. Then time was up, and I had to quit. It looks like there won't be time to work tonight because son #3 needs help with a paper that's due tomorrow. Last night I made things worse by forgetting to help carefully, and I drove the kid to that brick wall of stuckness that makes autism a such a pain. When I'm doing my own writing and rewriting and thinking about writing, my brain leaps around from thought to thought, like "what's the point of this sentence--wait, doesn't this go with that sentence down there--that word's not strong enough, what's a better one--wait, what's the main idea again--oh yeah, so then this doesn't work, maybe it needs to be deleted--no, if this phrase is cut it makes sense after all...". I have a bad tendency, when I'm talking to other people about writing, to forget to turn on the brakes and the internal censor. I braked and censored last night, but first too little, and then too late. So tonight I have to do better.

It is possible that we can break down the paper and sort out what son needs to write for the pieces of it, in a way where he absorbs the concept he's supposed to learn, and I could have time left for WIP. But probably not.

I finally finished reading Tale of Genji yesterday in the car. I've had it in my console for a year or two, and have been reading it in the carpool line, although not every day. And it's not even the complete Tale of Genji, it's only the first nine chapters, maybe a fifth or so of the whole thing, depending on who you're talking to. I think the introduction explained why my version only included nine chapters, but it's been so long since I read the introduction I've forgotten what the explanation was.

I might start over and reread the book--or not--now that I have an idea what to expect and how it goes. I was thinking about it last night, and realized that it reminds me of the Master and Commander series by Patrick O'Brian. Both wander around without the same kind of strong plot structure most books have. In the Jack Aubrey books, it was like I'd be reading along and suddenly some beloved or key character who's been around for six or eight books dies in a throwaway paragraph, and that's it--the story just moves on. If there was any three act structure in most of the books, I couldn't tell you what it was. It was like P. O'Brian just loved his characters and the world they inhabited, and spent as much time there as possible. And the reader likes being there too, even without the usual tight rising action, climax, resolution, etc.

Same with Genji. That was written over years, and you can tell the author just enjoyed her characters and being with them day by day.

So what does this say about the rules re. structure? These books are very readable, and they're memorable, too. Maybe because of the characters--yeah, it's the characters who stay with you, I think. Maybe that says that if you love your characters enough, it can come through in the writing, and a reader might just be willing to wander around with them through endless ocean adventures or romantic affairs. But boy, I can't see trying to put out/sell a book right now that does this. Now that I think about it, there are probably about twenty gazillion wannabe writers out there who have aimlessly meandering stories they're trying to sell. Why are those boring, while these two series (Genji really seems like a series, and I think it was written as one) are not (depending on your taste)?

And now that I think further, Alice in Wonderland was rather pointlessly meandering, wasn't it? No, I guess the reader was wondering how and when she'd get home. Hmm.