Book continues its happy gallop down the to the finish line, paying no attention to its writer.<\/p>\n
I will say it’s interesting.\u00a0\u00a0 Though the newly introduced “character” has a regrettable tendency to spout infodump, I think it’s telling me<\/em>, and it will be easy to prune that away so readers don’t have to deal with it.\u00a0\u00a0 (You think? <\/em>comes the little voice in my head.\u00a0 One of the little voices.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Book has now reached 160,233 words (just checked) and I was going to stop for the day at 160,000 but the infodump of backstory is interesting enough that I kept going.\u00a0 Also, when the infodump is done, I still want to know how A and B are going to do X, because to me it looks several stages below easy.<\/p>\n So…what can I say without spoilers?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, initially, I promised the editor that a major character would find a suitable spouse…and it looks like, although we’re a book late, we won’t be a spouse short.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Although there can’t be too many more plot bombs between now and that event, or it will be put off to book three and my editor (and possibly some of you) will organize a necktie party.<\/p>\n For one awful moment yesterday, I thought A (the surprise “I’m important, you need me” character) was about to morph into M (a known important but not POV character who’s been difficult lately) , but it turned out that although M is involved here, that wasn’t how.\u00a0\u00a0 My subconscious was simply introducing M so I’d be ready for one of A’s revelations.\u00a0 B, who is a POV character, is now with A, and getting M out of a situation M caused is what’s holding up the reunion of all the important parties that will let me (finally, and I hope)\u00a0 get the potential spouses in the same place at the same time long enough to share the moment (as it were.)\u00a0\u00a0 I fear that M may continue to be difficult.<\/p>\n I’ll mention at this point my theory about the fictional hinge.\u00a0 (My term–I don’t think you’ll find it anywhere else.)\u00a0\u00a0 Every story–short or long–has a point in which it “turns the corner”.\u00a0\u00a0 Up to that point, it’s on one side of the mountain, or one side of the river,\u00a0 and though its action has had ups and downs and turns (how many and how violent depend on length and type of story),\u00a0 it’s unified as preparation.\u00a0 Then it reaches the point in the story where there’s a view that reveals there’s more: more scope, more going on, more of the real terrain to be traveled.\u00a0 Can be internal or external or both.\u00a0 But from there, the story has a different energy and a different focus.\u00a0 All the elements are in place for the rest of the story and the conclusion.\u00a0 Now it’s the working out of what was started (everyone’s here; the party can begin.)<\/p>\n I call that point (which isn’t a literal point: it can last pages and pages–even, in multi-volume story arcs, a whole volume) the “hinge”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For me, writing a story, there’s a feeling around the hinge point of the story that lets me know the direction’s changing.\u00a0\u00a0 Because I’m an instinctive writer, I don’t know where the hinge is until I get there.<\/p>\n The hinge itself doesn’t read like a mountaintop experience, and may in fact be a pass and not a ridgetop.\u00a0 Be itself it has no climax, no “resolution” (the thing critics of multi-volume works usually rail against in the interior volumes.\u00a0\u00a0 But take a story you think is good, and cut it into thirds.\u00a0 The hinge is in the middle third.\u00a0\u00a0 In a three-volume long story, the hinge is in the second volume.\u00a0 In a one-volume story, it’ll be in the middle chapters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The hinge is the weakest part of the story, as Story:\u00a0 it doesn’t have, cannot have, a resolution.\u00a0\u00a0 So if you read the middle chapter or two out of the middle of a one-volume work, it’s unsatisfying.\u00a0 Who are these people?\u00a0 Why should you care?\u00a0 And the end of those chapters feels unfinished (as it is.)<\/p>\n Forcing a hinge paragraph, chapter, or volume into the mold of a complete story throws off the next paragraph\/chapter\/volume at the beginning, unless the entire story is episodic (a string of equally rounded events with no strong overall story arc.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First you fight the tiger, then you fight the bandits, then you fight the typhoon, then you fight the pirates…and then you get home and write “My Adventurous Journey.” )\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In long stories (like this one) it’s often possible to shape interior volumes–even the hinge volume–so there’s something to satisfy readers’ natural desire for a proper ending, but it’s not the real ending–it’s a sub-climax.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But the reader who’s aching for the whole big song-and-dance-with-trumpets-and-drums ending still thinks it’s a cheat.\u00a0 It’s not a cheat.\u00a0 It’s the natural result of writing something that doesn’t end with volume one but has a coherent story arc over the whole group.<\/p>\n We don’t have all the terminology for long groups of books.\u00a0 To me, a “series” is a string of books in an episodic way:\u00a0 each book has its own story arc, and the books are related in place, time, and character, but there is no story arc.\u00a0 So what do we call groups of books that do have a story arc?\u00a0 Um…uh…well, I call them a “group” once they get past trilogy.\u00a0 (And the term trilogy is sometimes used for books that could stand alone but are related, usually with one protagonist.)\u00a0\u00a0 Or\u00a0 “multi-volume novel,” which is accurate, but a mouthful.<\/p>\n Now back to seeing if A and B can get M out of M’s predicament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Book continues its happy gallop down the to the finish line, paying no attention to its writer. I will say it’s interesting.\u00a0\u00a0 Though the newly introduced “character” has a regrettable tendency to spout infodump, I think it’s telling me, and it will be easy to prune that away so readers don’t have to deal with […]<\/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":[106,20,107],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-contents","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310"}],"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=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}