Book IV, that is.\u00a0\u00a0 Still busy with business stuff (and tax stuff, and Lent-into-Holy-Week music stuff and…so on) but Book IV is now back up the priority ladder and scooting along.\u00a0\u00a0 5000 words so far this week.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not going to make 10,000, because a) I took time off today to have lunch with friends and b) I’ve invited different friends to dinner Saturday evening, which means I have to do some grocery shopping and spend some time Saturday cooking.\u00a0\u00a0 But still.\u00a0\u00a0 Book IV is back on the track and moving.<\/p>\n
Exactly where it’s moving I can’t tell you, but I’m finding out a whole collection of facts I will try not to land on you like the world’s biggest infodump.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fascinating, interesting, psychologically relevant, but…as presently written, we have talking heads talking…and talking…and talking.<\/p>\n
This will not do, and you will not be bored by them, because they won’t exist in the final version.\u00a0\u00a0 The Author Has Spoken: Begone.\u00a0\u00a0 (Though not yet–I’m using them for background.)\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, there’s the problem of minor characters who do not wish to stay minor.\u00a0\u00a0 (“You don’t have a POV section; please sit down and wait to be called…”\u00a0 “But I’m INTERESTING!\u00a0 I’m more interesting than HE (or SHE) is.”\u00a0 “That may be, but this is not your story.\u00a0 All the POV parts have been assigned already.\u00a0 You are the fourth bootboy in the stable.\u00a0\u00a0 X is gracious to you;\u00a0 Z is snotty to you, and the purpose of those brief encounters is to demonstrate X’s graciousness and Z’s snottiness.\u00a0 Now go sit down and wait to be called, or I’ll give your admittedly brief role to Silent Sue.” \u00a0 Silent Sue immediately leaps up and stands right in front of the desk, looking hopeful. )<\/p>\n
I was reading a series of posts on writing recently, in which the author laid out a very sensible (albeit complicated) way of creating characters in fiction.\u00a0\u00a0 But ye gods, the work that method implies.<\/p>\n
It’s really quite simple to create characters…you let them come to you, and (as with opening a publishing house) as soon as they know they have an audience, they pour out of your subconscious in thickening streams, all with a story to tell.\u00a0\u00a0 (Doesn’t everyone walk around with a head full of strangers all eager to tell their stories?\u00a0 Apparently not.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s the management that’s hard.\u00a0\u00a0 Nearly all of them are eager to be used, and some are very, very good at insinuating themselves into more of the book than you’d planned.<\/p>\n
And another thing about elves:\u00a0 it’s very hard to get them to answer questions, to talk to their writer (or other characters) except in enigmatic and evasive ways…but once you do it’s impossible to shut them up.\u00a0 (“And another thing–remember I told you [large chunk of infodump]?\u00a0 Well, you really need to know that behind that<\/em> was this other<\/em> [large chunk of infodump] because of course it started back when [yet another large chunk of infodump.]\u00a0 Although maybe it was even before that.<\/em>..”)\u00a0 Beings that live thousands of years have a lot of wordage in reserve.\u00a0\u00a0 And when they have a friendly listener who isn’t saying (out loud, anyway) “How could you have fallen for that<\/em>?” and “That<\/em> was stupid!” they open up amazingly.<\/p>\n Dragon is still not telling me everything I want to know in order to finish the story.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was bad enough when Gird (being a drunk young man at the time) leered at me, but Dragon looks me straight in the face and demands to know if I’m wise enough to write this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Book IV, that is.\u00a0\u00a0 Still busy with business stuff (and tax stuff, and Lent-into-Holy-Week music stuff and…so on) but Book IV is now back up the priority ladder and scooting along.\u00a0\u00a0 5000 words so far this week.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not going to make 10,000, because a) I took time off today to have lunch with friends […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}