Page proofs are done and should be shipped off today if I make it to the city.\u00a0 Otherwise, another day (not due yet, so no screaming rush.)<\/p>\n
As to Book IV, I had an interesting chat with a writer-friend last night, complaining that something I wrote way back at the beginning of this, and had been trying to find the right place for, really needs to go in Book IV–but I’m not sure where or how.\u00a0\u00a0 He had an idea, which I’m thinking about.\u00a0\u00a0 I like what I’ve written as I’ve written it, and it would have to be changed (in tone, in detail) to do what he’s suggested (essentially, moving from a mysterious but suggestive scene to a dream sequence.)<\/p>\n
My idea is that the scene should be fully concrete to the reader; they’re there, they’re seeing the detail, feeling the rock and sand and sun.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That’s hard to do in a dream without over-pressuring it (I think…)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I could use the apparent dream in Vatta’s War<\/em> because I’d used the actual scene before, and the “dream” was actually the stored memory of the event in Ky’s father’s implant–it was “playing” like a movie directly into her brain.\u00a0 Dreams are peculiar and nearly always (to seem real as dreams) have some logic leaps and gaps and weirdness.\u00a0\u00a0 This needs to be (or I think it needs to be)\u00a0 very undreamlike, though also very strange to the rest of the group of books so far.\u00a0\u00a0 The people in the scene are real and are (to themselves anyway) acting perfectly logically.<\/p>\n And yet dreams are in this book anyway.\u00a0\u00a0 Hm.<\/p>\n Such dilemmas are common in writing–the reader needs to know something, and there are always multiple ways of getting that information to the reader.\u00a0 (“As you know, Bob, the gritzlemanger intersects the formdongle at 46.3 degrees precisely…” being one of the least approved in today’s writing.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One character can tell another.\u00a0 One character can think about it….can read it in a book or see it on a news screen or overhear it in a tavern or receive it mentally as a bright idea, a telepathic communication from an alien, or…a dream.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or the writer can change viewpoints and put the reader right down in front of the needed information, a firm instruction to look and learn because you’re going to need this.<\/p>\n Different readers prefer (or loathe) the different methods.\u00a0\u00a0 Among the things the internet has done for writers is give them access to lots and lots and lots of readers talking about what they like and don’t like in lots and lots and lots of books.\u00a0\u00a0 Too much information, in a way, because it’s so contradictory.\u00a0 Reader A loathes Writer R’s books because of the human-animal connection (could be cats, dogs, horses) and Reader B loves the same books for the same reason.\u00a0\u00a0 Reader C\u00a0 actually enjoys infodump and prefers writers who go into long explanations…Reader D cannot stand even the slightest hint of infodump and despises the writers favored by Reader C.<\/p>\n So the writer trying to figure out the best way to connect his\/her readers with a given body of knowledge that’s going to be even more useful a little later on, where the writer doesn’t want to slow things down at all….has choices, but also the need to think carefully.\u00a0 For these<\/em> readers, of this<\/em> book, which method will work best?\u00a0\u00a0 Should you sacrifice the immediacy and concreteness of a head-on scene for the intimacy and obvious plot-connection of a dream?\u00a0 And if so, whose dream should it be?<\/p>\n In the meantime, there are words to be written on the main line, and sometimes just writing more main-line words clarifies what should be done with that odd, evocative, and strange little scene that connects (boy, does it connect!!) down the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Page proofs are done and should be shipped off today if I make it to the city.\u00a0 Otherwise, another day (not due yet, so no screaming rush.) As to Book IV, I had an interesting chat with a writer-friend last night, complaining that something I wrote way back at the beginning of this, and had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,61,5],"tags":[62,107],"class_list":["post-1298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-craft","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298"}],"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=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}