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I was trotting briskly along yesterday, with Book indicating it meant to break to a canter any moment now. The moment came, action took off…and then, at an about-to-be-really-exciting moment, it bucked off the writer and disappeared.
It then offered a competing scenario, with a different and equally interesting possibility, and disappeared again.
So, I said to it, which path is the real one? Book chuckled evilly and refused to answer.
I don’t have time for this, I said.
Fine, Book said, and turned its back. You think you’re so smart, try it all by yourself.
Telling Book that I’m not smart, I’m creative, and it’s my creation and had better suck it up and write itself was probably not the smartest thought I ever hatched in Book’s presence. In tussles between Writer and Book, Book usually comes out on top. But Book enjoys tussling, so annoying Book sometimes works where nothing else will. Other Books have been threatened with the addition of dancing dolphins wearing pink tutus or “adorable” little girl characters who lisp or text in limerick form.
The current tangle involves a minor character who either is, or is not, a bad guy. If a bad guy, he murdered a good guy and is wearing the good-guy’s uniform. If a good guy, he’s…well, he’s a good guy. But it bears on the message carried by this person (legitimate? faked? legitimate despite being carried by a bad guy? faked despite being carried by a good guy? I didn’t expect a messenger for another two hours (our time) or in that uniform, but it’s possible a messenger could be that fast.
Enough other events flow from the intrusion of this messenger that I need to know which it is now, and not later. I could of course just delete the whole thing leading up to the messenger and start this section fresh, but something about the messenger feels right and necessary–and something in what I’ve written doesn’t.
This will untangle itself (hopefully sometime today) but until it does it’s an uncomfortable feeling.
Comment by Dave Ring — June 23, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Welcome to quantum reality. Looks like you’ll have to wait a while with the messenger being both good and bad until some key observation fixes him in one state or the other. On the optimistic side, maybe this will let Book / your mind do something subtle and magical that it could not accomplish by immediately insisting on one alternative.
Comment by paul Tar jr — June 23, 2009 @ 12:44 pm
Could be worse….I partake in fantasy roleplaying, and a friend of mine did something like what I’ve ATTEMPTED to write below. I needed a flowchart by the end of the weekend that this occurred to try and figure things out.
Could be a bad guy dressed up in a good guy uniform for the wrong reasons (as in what had led him to be a bad guy) now being set up by bigger badder bad guys who planted a false document on the now murdered guy to further mess with the ‘bad guy’, and therefore deviate him from his good guy destiny/intentions (and also pull attention off of them).
-Paul
Comment by elizabeth — June 23, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
Aieee! The brain, it hurtsss!! (runs away, fingers in ears…) (this is supposed to be funny, but on the internet one never knows)
Comment by elizabeth — June 23, 2009 @ 2:04 pm
Quantum reality, eh? Well, I live there, in some ways. What’s happened so far is that I realized something was left out perhaps 100 pages back, in a different place, in a different POV.
Is there too much foreshadowing? Is there too much Other Stuff happening between that stuff (the stuff about 100 pages back–and the stuff in between involves a *different* POV from the different POV above) for readers to grasp that the formerly left out bit occurs almost simultaneously with the chapter that comes afte the Other Stuff?
And why (rhetorical question, very dramatic, hand to forehead and eyes rolled up to heaven) do I repeatedly get myself in the situation where Important Other Stuff is happening in multiple locations to multiple people, all of it plot-critical???
And why also (rhetorical, but more irritated than operatic-dramatic) does Other Real-Life Stuff inevitably land on me at the same time as the major crunch points of a book?
(And why doesn’t the author just shut up and write?, some of you are probably wondering. OK, OK, I’m on my way with a virtual fire extinguisher to the hottest of the flames…)
Comment by elizabeth — June 23, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
And lo, the brambles part and the writer is given a hint of what went wrong.
Sometimes those who make comments each have a missing piece of the puzzle. (I know I’m mixing metaphors. It’s OK.)
Comment by Barb — June 23, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
Happy SF/F Writers Day. And thank you for all your hard work. Especially when Book is being uncooperative.
Comment by Dave Ring — June 23, 2009 @ 4:26 pm
Second that! And thanks for sharing not only your stories, but the ups and downs of the creative process. Although the gnomish part of me feels the burden of your unrecompensed generosity most acutely.
Comment by elizabeth — June 23, 2009 @ 7:46 pm
Oh, thank you Barb and Dave.
I do wish we weren’t facing another several days of record heat (they promise we’ll break the record tomorrow as we did today. O joy. Not.)
This evening Book claims I’ve got it harnessed to an unbalanced cart and it’s stuck in the mud on one side. Much lurching and jerking of the forward progress. There is progress, but…ow. Need more aspirin.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — June 24, 2009 @ 6:32 am
I have a modest list of writers I regularly pray for (all people I have some sort of connection with); my efforts on your behalf are hereby redoubled. We clergy have no particular hot line in this regard, but one does what one can.
Comment by Dave Ring — June 24, 2009 @ 10:03 am
Why wouldn’t plot-critical stuff happen to multiple characters in multiple places at the same time? Isn’t that the way life is? The hard job is to successfully represent parallel events and thought processes in a serial medium. Good authors, good readers and good microprocessors are blessed with enough registers, stacks and cache memory to handle lots of plot/program threads and complexity. But as you point out, Author must always worry how well Book will run on Average Reader’s processor.
Comment by Layla — June 24, 2009 @ 10:31 am
well, for my last comment for a month or two, I’ll say this: Good guy or Bad guy, whichever fits the plot, this character sounds like it’ll be great to read.
Comment by elizabeth — June 24, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Are you disappearing on us, Layla? Do come back when you can.
Dave, one reason to write from a single POV is that it’s much easier for readers to follow (and much easier for beginners to do, too!) Even though things are happening to other people elsewhere simultaneously, if it’s only one person’s story, the writer (and reader) can stick with that person. Multiperson viewpoints necessarily add length to cover the same timespan–which is why these books are so fat for such a short timespan.
It’s one of those tradeoff things writers have to balance for best effect: multi-viewpoint adds “value” one way–by showing readers what must be guessed at otherwise, the motivations of more characters–but since books cannot be infinitely long, multi-viewpoint must rob wordage from *somewhere* to fit within reasonable covers. And it requires special care to maintain a balance between absolute chronology in parallel plotlines and what readers will find accessible. (You can’t say “Meanwhile, back at the ranch” too many times or it’s an eye-roller.)
Kip, prayers are always welcome, but spread your cloak over the whole clan, if you would. I know of some special needs.