Surprisingly, today ended up being a really good writing day. I started off trying to pull together the bits I knew had to be in the middle, and as I worked through in a general organizational fashion--just putting like pieces together and cutting things that weren't hands-down absolutely necessary--it started taking on a shape and momentum that carried through the Menelaus part and then eased into the Alexandros part.

I didn't get all of the middle. I still don't see how to slide into it naturally and with rising action from the beginning. But I saw how to pick up somewhere in there and get the story rolling again. I cut a couple of threads I had left hanging because I wasn't sure about them--because it's clear now that they aren't needed. The whole second half of the story is simpler and more streamlined and makes sense. In my head, that is. What's actually on the paper is still a huge mess.

It's good to know it can come together. I was starting to think the whole thing would have to be manhandled and manipulated and I'd always feel a little unsettled about it. So it's a relief to feel that click of a huge chunk of the ms slipping into place on its own.

Yesterday I somehow ended up working on a part I didn't really want to work on. I don't know what happened; I was skimming along trying to figure out where I wanted to start work, and got sucked into changing and rewording and it snowballed from there. It didn't hurt anything, but I was hoping for a more productive use of my time.

Now today once again I'm edging into the middle and I can see what a big mess of trouble it's going to be. Too many tones (close third person literary, familiar third person conversational, removed third person historical, snarky third person me), and the "pacing" is going to be splotches of story that happened to fall onto the page with no rhyme or reason to them. I don't know what to do. Maybe the thing to do is quit trying to make sense of the whole and write out some of the individual pieces that I know have to be there, and see what happens. Just focus on definite, small, chewable bits.

I am ignoring a certain thread toward the beginning that I keep almost taking out because it seems like it's too much and too complicated at that point in the story, but then I also keep seeing that it moves the tone away from the misleading chipper midgrade voice of the story beginning, and also it adds tension and adheres to the main idea that drives the story for me. And it's pretty well woven in right now; it's going to be a pain to un-weave. So for now I'm making myself leave it and not think about it.

I meant to write yesterday, but got sidetracked by learning that Rashomon is going to be the next Samurai Saturday movie on IFC. I've been wanting to see that! I know it's supposed to be one of the greats, so I read up on it a little in hopes I can pick up on some of the interesting points as I'm watching. It's supposed to be one event (a rape and murder) told four times from four different POVs, so there's a lot to watch for.

I also found (online) the two short stories (both by Akutagawa Ryunosuke) the movie's based on, the main one being "In a Grove." It's a very short story, but has seven POVs, each one telling about the rape/murder as that particular POV character saw/did it.

Then today I was looking through McCormack's book (see yesterday's post) trying to find something else, and saw a few paragraphs about characters "braiding" together. McCormack is talking about a ms where the author switches POVs among five characters, which is not what's causing my problem with my swordfighting ms, but he mentions the symptom "little sense of increasing momentum," which of course caught my eye. Then (re. having five characters' stories going on all at once) he uses the phrase "don't entwine into a humming cable of circuitry." He's talking about a different type of problem than the one I'm having, but now I'm thinking characters should braid into a humming cable of circuitry. At least, they should in this ms (the swordfighting one) because all three major characters are of nearly equal importance in my eyes.

So now I'm feeling a little more strongly that I need to buckle down and write out the story from the two non-main characters' POVs, in order to provide myself with a firm footing. I probably also ought to strongly consider whether the ms would come to life if I tried different POVs for different chapters. This is not what McCormack was advising but, hey, I take ideas where I can get them.

Side note: WF says that the problem of the MC with a negative goal can indeed be solved by the stated/announced goal (see yesterday's post). In short: the sagging or nonexistent tension of a goal-less MC can be negated by having the MC plainly state small plans or goals or strategies that aren't necessarily about the main problem of the ms. So. Hmm. Am trying to wrap my mind around this and see where and how it might be helpful to me in the former GN.

(The answer to yesterday's question turned out to be: sometimes in scene, sometimes not. At its root, the answer seemed to lie in whether you get bored reading. If you get bored reading in scene, then it's gone on too long and can be paraphrased or cut. If you get bored with the paraphrasing of out-of-scene, then you either cut it shorter or dig in and have a scene so the reader can get some firm ground underfoot.)

Anyway. Two threads of thought today, writing-wise.

First, I only had about an hour to work, so I glanced at (really glanced at--like, just read the chapter titles) the ms from the beginning and tried to get a sense of flow leading into the middle part. I wanted to see if I could do any quick shaping that might carry me a little farther into that particular wasteland. What I ended up with was some freewriting where I articulated some of the things I know about the middle and the characters, and would like to bring out in the ms. However, I didn't figure out how to bring them out. I just articulated them, that's all. It will have to do for now. I hope the back of my mind works on the problem, because I don't see how to do it unless I get all author-intrusive.

Second, interesting discussion with writer friend re. that great bane, the passive MC. The MC who is just fine, thanks, but then crap happens and his/her only goal is dealing with the crap. WF reminded me of Thomas McCormack's The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist. I dug out my copy and tried to find the pertinent part, which basically is: the MC needs to make a plan and state it for the reader. This plan provides some juice, some pep (my words, not TM's) for the narrative. In TM's example, the MC already has a goal, but it's not enough because apparently she's not doing anything about it.

Now that I think about it, I guess I'm mixing this up with an MC who has a negative goal. Like, "I don't want X to happen," or "I don't want things to change." A passive MC probably has a positive goal, but just isn't doing anything about it. That's different, isn't it?

Like if a kid's mom is taking him to the doctor to get a shot. The kid doesn't want to go--that's a negative goal. Passivity has nothing to do with the situation. Crap is befalling him, and he's got to deal with it. But the example in TM's book is of a girl who wants to leave a hick town and, er, do whatever people do when they leave hick towns.* She has a goal--something she wants to achieve.

So maybe one question is: can a MC's stated plan help boost a story where the MC has a negative goal? I don't know.




*Usually they seem to sit around congratulating themselves on not being hicks anymore, since they've changed location. But I digress.

In scene, or not in scene; that is the question.

Still working on last section of former GN. Today I hated the direction some of it was taking, and reworked it.

Right now this whole ms is three separate stories lined up one after the other. They're connected, but something bothers me about them. I guess it's that they don't feel inevitable in that book-ish way, where something happens and maybe you're a little surprised but you're also satisfied because the story's woven to lead naturally to that event. My three storylines are more like real life, where stuff happens and it doesn't fit together so well. Events are slightly more random; often if there's continuity or rising action in our lives, it's only what we've supplied in our own heads. That makes for a crappy book, methinks.

Maybe the answer is in the missing middle part; maybe that's the key to pull it all together. However, I'm not working on that right now. Which is good because I don't know what to do with it anyway.

Today, events conspired to send me to the last section of the former GN ms. Before being driven there by circumstance, I had the thought that it's okay if this last part's different in voice from the beginning--more bare and dialog-driven--because then I can bring it back around to match the beginning's tone if I want to, at the very, very end. And that would not be a bad thing at all.

As I worked on it this morning, a couple of nice things popped out. First, a repeated image from earlier tied up with an image from the middle, and so there they are together near the end, providing a nice thread that goes all the way through and not only develops, but tells me something I need to develop in the middle part, which is where I'm sort of stuck.

Also, I got some nice inroads made into developing the last section. I've got a new image that could provide me with some footing in other places, but it may be too stupid--will have to wait and see.

Also--this is not about the ms--I had a nightmare last night from watching The Virgin Spring. I couldn't tell you the last night a movie gave me nightmares. And TVS is an arty gore-free Swedish movie! It's very violent, but the power of the violence is in the way it's staged and filmed, not in explicitness. I'd seen the very, very end of the movie a while back, and thought it was kind of sappy, but when I saw it was on again I thought I'd take a look--not realizing that despite the sappy ending it was an Ingmar Bergman film. I got hooked even though it was kind of slow and quiet. Even the violence is slow and quiet and understated.

I've only seen a couple of IB movies before, and the only one I remember anything about is The Seventh Seal, which I didn't see all of, but which has the same slow pacing as TVS. Somehow the slow pacing gives me time to absorb and think, without boring me. In fact, it almost forces me to think. Maybe it's that the pacing's not really slow, but that there's a lot of silence. Maybe it's the way the shots are so carefully constructed in that silence, so you actually have time to think about what it means that they're that way.

I don't know what this all means to writing. I don't know what the equivalent of silence and carefully constructed shots would be, in a novel. I don't know how you'd achieve that leisurely pace while keeping the reader hooked and also drawing them in deeper. The thing about novels is that you can't control how long the reader takes to read. You can affect the pacing in the way you utilize sentence length and white space, but some people are going to read faster and some are going to read slower and there's nothing you can do about it. Unlike in a movie where if you have a 30-second shot, it's going to take everybody 30 seconds to watch it.

I saw a Youtube video where Ang Lee talked about the profound effect that TVS had on his work. He mentioned a scene near the end of the movie that I'd noticed, but hadn't considered in movie terms because I was busy thinking about the character. Not wanting to give spoilers, I'll just say that the shot shows an anguished man of faith speaking to God. Ang Lee points out that the natural shot for that--it's a climactic point of the movie--would be a close up on the man's face. Instead, IB used a long shot from behind the man, as he puts his fists to the sky, collapses, etc. The shot is outside, and I believe we see the man walk away from the camera, down a grassy slope we've seen before, and we end up slightly above him on the slope, looking down at the man who is centered on the screen as he has his moments of spiritual agony.

So: why? What does it accomplish to show the man like that, rather than letting us see all the details of his expression? To me, his agony doesn't seem any less because of the distance. Maybe it makes it worse because he seems more alone in the middle of the screen. You'd think that drawing close and getting a really good look at him would be more raw and powerful--but this scene is somehow constructed so that staying at a removed distance does the job better. And we don't see his face, only his back, his posture, his gestures.

Maybe it's that you know he can only walk so far, and he can't outwalk anything that's happened. You know he's got to stop right there; he has no choice, really.

There's something here to think about re. writing, but I don't know what it is yet. I already know that when you try too hard to show tears or laughter, you kill the moment. I already know it's usually stronger to understate emotion. But this is different--the whole thing is constructed opposite of what you'd think. I wonder if there's an equivalent for it in writing--a long shot for an emotionally wrenching scene, where distance somehow doesn't lessen what we feel.