Paksworld

I’d been struggling with a chapter–and specifically the first scene in that chapter–for weeks, off and on, in and around others.    It’s pivotal to a very important plotline and also to the chronological tangle previously  mentioned.   I’ve rewritten it.  I’ve written completely new versions, not looking at the old one.  I’ve cut and pasted…cut and not pasted…moved things, ripped things out, added stuff…and nothing was quite right.  Today it began to make more sense (well, I understand what it has to do better, maybe) but something was still missing.  Finally, the missing detail was outlined for me  (X needs to have found/be holding Y), but what the heck was Y?

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A listserv I’m on mentioned that a member had published a review of Game of Thrones in a major market,  so I wandered over to look.    Here’s the link: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1543&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint

I was impressed with the review on several counts, but the one I want to bring up here is the way other reviewers, critics, and readers talk about characterization, especially in the area of morality/ethics and spirituality.  This isn’t about GRRM’s books, per se, but about a way of looking at all books, and considering how a writer’s view of reality affects how that writer constructs characters.   Right now–in the review cited and in other writing about Game of Thrones–Martin epitomizes one particular view of reality, history, and human nature.    Tolkein is often cited as his opposite. Thus it’s important to use language appropriate to those fundamental views–which Teitelbaum does in her review,  and many others do not.

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Because it’s already late in the evening (nearly 11 pm) but I had a long nap (largely due to a migraine, but that’s another issue) I’m now awake at a time when I can’t first-draft  fiction and won’t sleep.  So in light of the discussion of yesterday’s post–of character stuff–I feel like rattling on about characters in fiction.    Some of this I’m sure I’ve said before; if you need to go “Yeah, yeah, know that, get ON with it” feel free to do so.    But new ideas about characters keep popping up in my head that might be useful to those of  you who want to write fiction–or, want to write nonfiction about people.

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I don’t know if this will continue, but there’s a stuffed cow in Book V.    There’s a stuffed cow in Book V partly because of an email I got some months back, but also because, as soon as I got the email, the stuffed cow appeared in the book.  At first for no reason.  I stared (mentally) at the stuffed cow and it didn’t even look back.  It wasn’t a very good stuffed cow.  It was big, and badly done, and ugly, and smelled some.  WHY was there a stuffed cow in my book?    I understood it had something to do with the impetus of the email, but not what it had to do with the story.

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At my friend’s daughter’s wedding,  I met my friend’s uncle, whose first name happens to be that of a character in Paksworld.    It’s a fairly unusual name in the U.S.    Naturally, she was curious why I had given that character that name, and wondered if she’d said something about her uncle, way back when.

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I am recovering from a bout of total exhaustion this morning after my next-to-last panel…got back to the hotel room shaky and basically unable to do anything but flop down in this chair.  At least I got the netbook plugged in before I just couldn’t get up again.  Last panel will have to survive without me.

But–ChiCon was fun, and I’m glad I got to meet those of you who were able to come (and who found me–this hotel/convention complex is confusing!!!) The chocolate–both the bar with almonds and cranberries, and the gorgeous box of Latvian chocolate–was devoured with glee (I did share the big box with others, because…well…I’d have felt guilty gobbling it all on my own.)

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I really admire Sharon Lee & Steve Miller’s Liaden books, because they handle issues of register and custom so well.  For those not dragged backwards through a linguistics course at some point, “register” refers to the way people speak in reference to social roles.    Most of us learn as children that one mode of speaking is fine with another child–a friend, say–but another is needed to satisfy expectations when talking to a friend of our parents.  That’s register: everything from the choice of words to the tone of voice to the topics considered appropriate…communication changes with social situations.

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A productive day is a day on which at least 2000 words pile up.    I’ve been dealing with 1000 word days, 850 word days, 1600 word days, even 1854 word days…but the clear-sailing ahead 2000 word days have been thin on the calendar.   Today was one of them, plus some.

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Tuesday and Wednesday were both 2000+ word days, and though today is moving much slower (there was writing-related business to do this morning, which also involved a trip to town to the post office),  Book V seems to be over its “You ignored me–I’ll ignore you” snit.    I’ve written out almost all of one of early-Tuesday-morning’s plot-bombs, and have the other still to do (notes made at the time, of course.)    I think it’s not quite as “big” in terms of wordage, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s an important chunk of plot, to be sure.

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Ritual disclaimer: nobody gets through a long writing career without some mistakes.  You will sometimes trust the wrong research source (even if it’s someone who should have the knowledge you’re looking for–say a fire department veteran you’ve asked about a procedural point in managing a multi-alarm fire…and no, this isn’t a problem I’ve had.)    No writer knows everything, and every writer must, at some point, trust a map, or a reference book, or a person who seems to have first-hand knowledge.

But there’s a huge difference between occasionally  trusting the wrong source and not looking something up at all.   Writers should look things up in the best source they can find or beg/borrow/get via Interlibrary Loan before they plan a book or a chapter–and should let the facts dictate how the story goes, rather than ignoring the facts because they already have a fantasy-version in mind.

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