So as I’m slogging, lurching, struggling through the mental swamp that is this part of Book IV,\u00a0 I realize that what keeps tripping me up is the E subplot.\u00a0 (As opposed to A, B, C, and D.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What the heck is going on with E-subplot (or, to shorten things, Eplot.<\/p>\n
As usual, now that I’m more than a book ahead of you, I can’t tell you what Eplot is about and ask for help or anything.\u00a0\u00a0 Eplot has its roots way, way back–it’s part of the Old Stuff that’s coming boiling up in the new group of books.\u00a0\u00a0 I have the feeling (or maybe blind hope) that if I can get Eplot sorted, everything else will unkink and line out at a nice brisk trot.\u00a0\u00a0 Right now, the characters who (present day) are dealing with elements of Eplot want to infodump\u00a0 and tell me (and you) all about it.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to know; you don’t.\u00a0 Or at least, you don’t need to know about it in the sort of plot malfeasance that occurred in one mystery I read (and consider this instance a perfect example of how not to impart information)…the protagonist, galloping full speed towards the now-discovered murderer who was galloping full speed away,\u00a0 starts lecturing the reader on how the height of horses is measured.<\/p>\n
So in the midst of other things going on, I won’t let my character suddenly give you a thousand years of history in a very large nutshell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And you should be very, very glad.\u00a0 Because even the best, most interesting and active characters, aren’t interesting when they become mouthpieces for the writer trying to figure out who did what to whom when and why it matters now.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately (and it is unfortunate) I have to write, and then read, the lecture(s) so that I can then use them in writing the actual story.\u00a0 If it really turns out that Deceased A and Live B had a child C who, though now Deceased, fathered D, I will be very annoyed with them for not telling me that earlier. \u00a0 Since A and B quarreled before A died (why did they quarrel???)\u00a0 there’s the question of why C was hanging around A, esp. as A didn’t much like C. \u00a0\u00a0 But if C wasn’t A and B’s child,\u00a0 and was only B’s child, that makes “why was C hanging around A even more important.<\/p>\n
At the moment, I can trace only three of A’s children for sure.\u00a0\u00a0 Two are dead, and only one (of the dead ones) had children.\u00a0\u00a0 If A and B were C’s parents, then C had children too.\u00a0\u00a0 (Yes, scribbly charts on cards and random pieces of paper have been done, scratched out, done again.)\u00a0\u00a0 In one sense, it would be tidy for A and B to be C’s parents, and tidy in a different way for B to be C’s parent (but not A) but is it real?\u00a0\u00a0 Feeling my way back alone the connections among people alive generations ago is…tricky.\u00a0\u00a0 The conscious plotter (as opposed to the Plot Daemon, who’s presently sound asleep and snoring loudly to prove it)\u00a0 is apt to go for “Oh, way cool idea!” and not some deeper truth.<\/p>\n
So here I am, muddy and sweaty and very tired of the swamp, but still clinging to the line of Eplot until I find its source and trace its course.\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, over on Cplot, someone’s jumping up and down and wanting to tell me something, but he’ll have to wait.\u00a0 All this stuff has to connect at the end, in the right way…so slogging is necessary now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So as I’m slogging, lurching, struggling through the mental swamp that is this part of Book IV,\u00a0 I realize that what keeps tripping me up is the E subplot.\u00a0 (As opposed to A, B, C, and D.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What the heck is going on with E-subplot (or, to shorten things, Eplot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5],"tags":[108,22,20,107],"class_list":["post-1190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-the-writing-life","tag-background","tag-characters","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190"}],"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=1190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}