One of the most difficult things in a rewrite is actually making serious changes. You know the existing text isn't right, but is it enough to just make a few little nips and tucks here and there, or does it need a complete reworking from the ground up?
And even when you do, you'll often find that you're going right back to the same old phrasing, especially if you're looking at the original text as you're rewriting. It's so bad that some writers have even suggested that you should put your first draft aside, then summarize it from memory and write the new text afresh.
I'm noticing this problem myself as I'm rewriting The Steel Breeds True yet again. For instance, there's a scene that now happens in a different place than in the earlier version of the story. I was trying to just rewrite it line by line, but as I re-read the new version, I'm realizing that it's just not working this way. And as I keep struggling with it, I'm coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the only way to fix it is to write a completely new text. A lot more work than just changing wording here and there, but the only way to make the changes that need to be made.
Showing posts with label Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle. Show all posts
Friday, January 02, 2015
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Like Grains of Sand
It's said that a few grains of falling sand can set an entire dune face into motion, even create a catastrophic slide. And similarly, a relatively small change in a novel can have enormous effect as they percolate through the storyline.
As I've been rewriting The Steel Breeds True, I did a little tweaking related to the majors of several of the key characters. At the time I didn't think it would have much impact -- but as I've been working on it, I keep discovering places where I have to rethink whole scenes, including the rationale for those characters to be present at a given place.
As a result, it's turning out to be a lot harder to rewrite this thing than I'd expected. I'm starting to wonder how much longer it's going to take.
As I've been rewriting The Steel Breeds True, I did a little tweaking related to the majors of several of the key characters. At the time I didn't think it would have much impact -- but as I've been working on it, I keep discovering places where I have to rethink whole scenes, including the rationale for those characters to be present at a given place.
As a result, it's turning out to be a lot harder to rewrite this thing than I'd expected. I'm starting to wonder how much longer it's going to take.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Working with Old Materials
Right now I'm looking at very similar problems with both of my current novel projects -- in both cases, I'm working with old materials. I'm trying to write Holovideo from an outline I wrote in the early 1990's, an outline in which I assumed a lot of stuff that never got onto the page, but have since forgotten. And while the current text of The Steel Breeds True was written in 2001, right after the 9/11 attack, the storyline goes back even further, all the way to the second half of the 1980's. As a result, there are a lot of unexamined assumptions in that text, things that I carried over from the earliest versions of the story without really thinking about.
So while on the surface it might seem like most of my work has already been done for me, there are ways in which it's actually almost harder to work with this old material than writing afresh might be. I'm stuck on Holovideo because I reached a chapter in the outline in which there's just no there there, nothing to unpack into text. And The Steel Breeds True is turning into a real uphill struggle because of the continual fear that the whole story is rubbish and there's just no salvaging it, and if I do put it up on KDP, everybody will laugh and point.
Which means that I'm having to put a lot of emotional energy into overcoming my own doubts and keeping pushing forward. As a result, I really fell behind when I was having to deal with two back-to-back conventions and all the bookwork that comes with selling at them.
However, we're now out of convention season, and as I'm switching our sales to online mode for the winter, I'm hoping that I can get some serious forward motion happening on both fronts.
So while on the surface it might seem like most of my work has already been done for me, there are ways in which it's actually almost harder to work with this old material than writing afresh might be. I'm stuck on Holovideo because I reached a chapter in the outline in which there's just no there there, nothing to unpack into text. And The Steel Breeds True is turning into a real uphill struggle because of the continual fear that the whole story is rubbish and there's just no salvaging it, and if I do put it up on KDP, everybody will laugh and point.
Which means that I'm having to put a lot of emotional energy into overcoming my own doubts and keeping pushing forward. As a result, I really fell behind when I was having to deal with two back-to-back conventions and all the bookwork that comes with selling at them.
However, we're now out of convention season, and as I'm switching our sales to online mode for the winter, I'm hoping that I can get some serious forward motion happening on both fronts.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Shadows of the Past
When I first got the idea of pulling out The Steel Breeds True and getting it ready for publication on KDP and other online e-book platforms, I thought it would need little more than a quick polish to get it into shape. Maybe a few changes here and there to bring it in line with some developments in some other novels, particularly in the relationships between some of the people in Tsar Joseph's court. And I figured it'd be good to break up some of the really long chapters for online reading. But I was pretty sure that I'd left it in decent shape when I last sent it out to a novel market in 2003.
But when I got it out and started working with it, I was astonished to find that it wasn't in nearly as good of shape as I'd remembered. The first couple of scenes in Chapter 1 weren't bad, needing only a couple of names changed. By the time I came to the third scene, I knew I was going to need to do some substantial work, and in later chapters I found whole scenes that needed to be restructured or cut altogether and summarized in some other scene.
By the time I got to the seventh chapter, I decided not to even try to plan in detail. There was a very real possibility that major changes in an earlier chapter would invalidate everything I was planning for later ones. So I decided to focus on doing the detail rewriting.
And in doing so, I realized that I was going to need to do some thinking about the deep-level concepts. The Steel Breeds True is one of my oldest novels. Although the current text dates back to the early 2000's, having been begun shortly after the September 11 attacks, I originally started writing it way back in 1995, when I was a freshman at the University of Illinois (where it's set). When I first wrote it, I thought it was going to be a short story, but it soon grew, drawing in more and more characters and goings-on around it, at least partly in response to various issues in my own life at the time.
In 1990 I finally ended up setting it aside, thinking it unsalvageable. It was partly the result of a particularly blistering critique, complete with snarky and condescending comments that seemed deliberately intended to wound rather than just to point out problems. But a big part of it was the changing world, which I thought had left it behind so thoroughly that it simply no longer had a market, and thus there was no reason to even try to do another rewrite. Better to just put it away and move on to other projects, of which I had plenty.
When the crumbling of the Soviet Union turned into full-out dissolution and the various union republics became fully sovereign states, I was certain of that judgment. Not just about the novel, but about the entire world in which it was set. Even when I wrote stories that were supposed to be part of the same continuity, I tried to minimize or conceal the connections. In the early 1990's, when I wrote Shapeshifter!, set in the middle of the Sharp Wars era, I avoided any mention of the Russian political landscape. Instead, Japan became the principal external enemy of the dictatorship that had taken over the US, a state of affairs that perfectly suited a story in which the protagonist takes the form of a World War II admiral and the antagonists are constantly making references to events he was involved in. Of course it helped that the first-person protagonist was a teen and thus not particularly aware of the world scene.
Yet it was still there at the back of my mind, even when I carefully avoided mentioning the Russian monarchy or anything that might draw awkward attention to what had become Yesterday's Future. Hardly surprising, considering that the world in which The Steel Breeds True is set was already several years old when I started writing that novel.
The Lanakhidzist Revolution timeline had its beginning when I was in junior high, when it still seemed unimaginable that the Soviet Union could fall from within. It was too strong, too well controlled by the iron fist of the Communist Party. If it were to be brought down, it would have to be by military force, which might well mean nuclear war and the post-apocalyptic future that was featured in so many books ranging from the hopeful Alas, Babylon through the grim Canticle for Liebowitz to the downright hopeless On the Beach. And through the 1980's, it was still possible for me to write it as a future history, although as Gorbachev's Perestroika progressed, it became increasingly Zeerusty. But when the Wall fell and when the Soviet Union dissolved, I could no longer imagine anybody buying it as science fiction.
When I did finally decide to pull it out and tackle it afresh as alternate history in response to an online discussion in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (basically, the thesis that old-style Cold War novels might well have a sudden resurgence in the market, either as straight-up historical fiction or as alternate history, as comfort reading for people longing for the certainties of a faceoff between two nation-states in this uncertain new world of non-state actors carrying out attacks in secret, without allegiance or accountability), all that internal history was still bubbling under the surface. All that unconsidered stuff left over from my high-school exuberance, which was then overlaid with an only slightly more mature exuberance of my college years, particularly when I was studying Russian.
And now, as I'm pulling The Steel Breeds True out yet again, I'm seeing places where stuff established way back in high school was simply assumed as background. Now, looking back with the eyes of a middle-aged married woman, I find that a lot of it just doesn't hold together under closer examination -- yet I have no idea what should be put there in its place.
I'm finding that I have a great deal of sympathy for JRR Tolkien's struggles to put The Silmarillion into publishable form after the success of The Lord of the Rings. How could he reconcile the sometimes whimsical elements of his youthful exuberance with his new stature as the author? In his case, death cut short his dithering and the process of putting his papers into order was left to other hands, not always in a completely satisfactory fashion. Which on reflection could serve as a warning against letting the best become the enemy of the good.
But when I got it out and started working with it, I was astonished to find that it wasn't in nearly as good of shape as I'd remembered. The first couple of scenes in Chapter 1 weren't bad, needing only a couple of names changed. By the time I came to the third scene, I knew I was going to need to do some substantial work, and in later chapters I found whole scenes that needed to be restructured or cut altogether and summarized in some other scene.
By the time I got to the seventh chapter, I decided not to even try to plan in detail. There was a very real possibility that major changes in an earlier chapter would invalidate everything I was planning for later ones. So I decided to focus on doing the detail rewriting.
And in doing so, I realized that I was going to need to do some thinking about the deep-level concepts. The Steel Breeds True is one of my oldest novels. Although the current text dates back to the early 2000's, having been begun shortly after the September 11 attacks, I originally started writing it way back in 1995, when I was a freshman at the University of Illinois (where it's set). When I first wrote it, I thought it was going to be a short story, but it soon grew, drawing in more and more characters and goings-on around it, at least partly in response to various issues in my own life at the time.
In 1990 I finally ended up setting it aside, thinking it unsalvageable. It was partly the result of a particularly blistering critique, complete with snarky and condescending comments that seemed deliberately intended to wound rather than just to point out problems. But a big part of it was the changing world, which I thought had left it behind so thoroughly that it simply no longer had a market, and thus there was no reason to even try to do another rewrite. Better to just put it away and move on to other projects, of which I had plenty.
When the crumbling of the Soviet Union turned into full-out dissolution and the various union republics became fully sovereign states, I was certain of that judgment. Not just about the novel, but about the entire world in which it was set. Even when I wrote stories that were supposed to be part of the same continuity, I tried to minimize or conceal the connections. In the early 1990's, when I wrote Shapeshifter!, set in the middle of the Sharp Wars era, I avoided any mention of the Russian political landscape. Instead, Japan became the principal external enemy of the dictatorship that had taken over the US, a state of affairs that perfectly suited a story in which the protagonist takes the form of a World War II admiral and the antagonists are constantly making references to events he was involved in. Of course it helped that the first-person protagonist was a teen and thus not particularly aware of the world scene.
Yet it was still there at the back of my mind, even when I carefully avoided mentioning the Russian monarchy or anything that might draw awkward attention to what had become Yesterday's Future. Hardly surprising, considering that the world in which The Steel Breeds True is set was already several years old when I started writing that novel.
The Lanakhidzist Revolution timeline had its beginning when I was in junior high, when it still seemed unimaginable that the Soviet Union could fall from within. It was too strong, too well controlled by the iron fist of the Communist Party. If it were to be brought down, it would have to be by military force, which might well mean nuclear war and the post-apocalyptic future that was featured in so many books ranging from the hopeful Alas, Babylon through the grim Canticle for Liebowitz to the downright hopeless On the Beach. And through the 1980's, it was still possible for me to write it as a future history, although as Gorbachev's Perestroika progressed, it became increasingly Zeerusty. But when the Wall fell and when the Soviet Union dissolved, I could no longer imagine anybody buying it as science fiction.
When I did finally decide to pull it out and tackle it afresh as alternate history in response to an online discussion in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (basically, the thesis that old-style Cold War novels might well have a sudden resurgence in the market, either as straight-up historical fiction or as alternate history, as comfort reading for people longing for the certainties of a faceoff between two nation-states in this uncertain new world of non-state actors carrying out attacks in secret, without allegiance or accountability), all that internal history was still bubbling under the surface. All that unconsidered stuff left over from my high-school exuberance, which was then overlaid with an only slightly more mature exuberance of my college years, particularly when I was studying Russian.
And now, as I'm pulling The Steel Breeds True out yet again, I'm seeing places where stuff established way back in high school was simply assumed as background. Now, looking back with the eyes of a middle-aged married woman, I find that a lot of it just doesn't hold together under closer examination -- yet I have no idea what should be put there in its place.
I'm finding that I have a great deal of sympathy for JRR Tolkien's struggles to put The Silmarillion into publishable form after the success of The Lord of the Rings. How could he reconcile the sometimes whimsical elements of his youthful exuberance with his new stature as the author? In his case, death cut short his dithering and the process of putting his papers into order was left to other hands, not always in a completely satisfactory fashion. Which on reflection could serve as a warning against letting the best become the enemy of the good.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Considering Strategies to Proceed
Right now I'm at a point where I need to decide how best to allocate my writing time, especially now that I'm trying to maintain some level of forward motion on my book reviewing site, my jobhunting site
and my economic awareness site. I have a number of writing projects in various states of completion, and I need to decide how to prioritize them.
I have multiple novels jockeying for my attention. I've been serializing Holovideo at JukePop Serials, and I'm rapidly closing in on the ending. My original outline from the early 1990's called for 28 chapters, but I've just combined chapters 19 and 20, and I'm looking at the possibility that several other planned chapters should be combined because there just isn't enough material in them individually to make a solid chapter. That means I may well have no more than 25 chapters, and if I do the remaining ones on a weekly basis, I'll be done with the novel by the end of the year, leaving me with the question of what (if anything) I want to serialize next.
However, interest in Holovideo has really fallen off. I'd had some good interest in September, but since the beginning of October I've posted three chapters and haven't received a single +vote on any of them. This lack of interest may be partly the result of new-chapter notifications not getting to the people who've put it on their bookshelf (I have not received a single notification for it, and neither has a friend who has it bookmarked), but it's not exactly conducive to enthusiasm about getting Chapter 20 written.
Meanwhile, I've been wanting to try out KDP and some other e-book programs that some friends have been having good success with. Rather than try to write a complete new novel from scratch, I had decided to rewrite an old novel, The Steel Breeds True, on the theory that it would be easier to spiff up something that already had a complete text.
However, I've been rather surprised to find out just how bad the existing text looks after ten years. It's going to take more than just a little surface spiffing of the text to get it into shape. A lot of the chapters need to be broken up into shorter chapters for electronic reading, and there are places where scenes need to be presented in a different order, and a few scenes may well be eliminated altogether or reduced to a quick summary at the beginning or end of another chapter.
So it's going to take a lot more time than I'd anticipated to get it done, and with all the trouble I'm having with Holovideo, I'm not able to give The Steel Breeds True nearly as much time as I'd like. So what I thought would be a quick and easy polish has turned into a stalled major reconstruction job.
Not to mention Last Moondance on Farside, which I was making such good progress on back in 2013, but then stalled on me when I needed to take care of other projects, particularly a couple of short stories for invitation-only anthologies (both of which were subsequently rejected, and I've been shopping around in hopes of finding some home for them). Chelsea Ayles and her adventures among the community at Shepardsport keep tugging at the back of my mind, wanting to be finished, but I keep feeling that my first obligation needs to be to finishing Holovideo.
And speaking of short stories interrupting novel progress, I'm working on a short story for an anthology with a deadline at the end of this month. I've got a full outline for it, and I've got it moving, but it's still time I don't have for any of the novels. And there's another, related story I want to write for the Jim Baen Memorial Science Fiction Contest. That's not due until the beginning of February next year, but it just keeps tugging at the back of my mind, wanting to be told, to the point it's a distraction. So I'm wondering whether it'd be better to just give in and get it written, then hang onto it until closer to the actual deadline so I could look at it with fresh eyes and give it a really good polish.
So that's where I stand right now on my writing projects.
and my economic awareness site. I have a number of writing projects in various states of completion, and I need to decide how to prioritize them.
I have multiple novels jockeying for my attention. I've been serializing Holovideo at JukePop Serials, and I'm rapidly closing in on the ending. My original outline from the early 1990's called for 28 chapters, but I've just combined chapters 19 and 20, and I'm looking at the possibility that several other planned chapters should be combined because there just isn't enough material in them individually to make a solid chapter. That means I may well have no more than 25 chapters, and if I do the remaining ones on a weekly basis, I'll be done with the novel by the end of the year, leaving me with the question of what (if anything) I want to serialize next.
However, interest in Holovideo has really fallen off. I'd had some good interest in September, but since the beginning of October I've posted three chapters and haven't received a single +vote on any of them. This lack of interest may be partly the result of new-chapter notifications not getting to the people who've put it on their bookshelf (I have not received a single notification for it, and neither has a friend who has it bookmarked), but it's not exactly conducive to enthusiasm about getting Chapter 20 written.
Meanwhile, I've been wanting to try out KDP and some other e-book programs that some friends have been having good success with. Rather than try to write a complete new novel from scratch, I had decided to rewrite an old novel, The Steel Breeds True, on the theory that it would be easier to spiff up something that already had a complete text.
However, I've been rather surprised to find out just how bad the existing text looks after ten years. It's going to take more than just a little surface spiffing of the text to get it into shape. A lot of the chapters need to be broken up into shorter chapters for electronic reading, and there are places where scenes need to be presented in a different order, and a few scenes may well be eliminated altogether or reduced to a quick summary at the beginning or end of another chapter.
So it's going to take a lot more time than I'd anticipated to get it done, and with all the trouble I'm having with Holovideo, I'm not able to give The Steel Breeds True nearly as much time as I'd like. So what I thought would be a quick and easy polish has turned into a stalled major reconstruction job.
Not to mention Last Moondance on Farside, which I was making such good progress on back in 2013, but then stalled on me when I needed to take care of other projects, particularly a couple of short stories for invitation-only anthologies (both of which were subsequently rejected, and I've been shopping around in hopes of finding some home for them). Chelsea Ayles and her adventures among the community at Shepardsport keep tugging at the back of my mind, wanting to be finished, but I keep feeling that my first obligation needs to be to finishing Holovideo.
And speaking of short stories interrupting novel progress, I'm working on a short story for an anthology with a deadline at the end of this month. I've got a full outline for it, and I've got it moving, but it's still time I don't have for any of the novels. And there's another, related story I want to write for the Jim Baen Memorial Science Fiction Contest. That's not due until the beginning of February next year, but it just keeps tugging at the back of my mind, wanting to be told, to the point it's a distraction. So I'm wondering whether it'd be better to just give in and get it written, then hang onto it until closer to the actual deadline so I could look at it with fresh eyes and give it a really good polish.
So that's where I stand right now on my writing projects.
Monday, October 06, 2014
The Gnawing Porcupine of Self-Doubt
In the beginning of The Steel Breeds True, Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle is struggling with her internal editor, who has taken to carping criticism and faultfinding instead of anything useful. He alternates between two forms, sometimes appearing as a tiny Nikolai Yezhov and at other times as a literal hedgehog.
Since there are no native hedgehogs in North America, mine takes the form of a porcupine. And unlike the insectivorous hedgehog with its generalist teeth, the porcupine is a rodent, with specialized gnawing teeth. And oh gods, but does mine ever gnaw at everything. Sometimes just getting words on paper is an uphill struggle as he gnaws away at every word, every phrase, every image.
And now that I'm beginning to prepare The Steel Breeds True for indie publication, it's getting even worse. Not just is my writing good at the word and sentence level, but is the story any good? What if the whole thing is so stupid that people will laugh and point?
It's the problem of finding the balance between being relentlessly self-critical in order to attain our best and being able to believe in ourselves when nobody else does. I wish I could offer a nice pat answer for everybody out there who's struggling with the same problem, whether in the form of an unending stream of say-nothing form rejections or a serialized novel posted to a reception of such utter indifference that one is left almost wishing for a blistering review because it would mean that someone actually cared. But all I can offer right now is fellow-feel, the knowledge that you are not alone in your uphill struggles, and at least now you do have options beside struggling to fit through the narrow door that is so carefully guarded by the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.
Since there are no native hedgehogs in North America, mine takes the form of a porcupine. And unlike the insectivorous hedgehog with its generalist teeth, the porcupine is a rodent, with specialized gnawing teeth. And oh gods, but does mine ever gnaw at everything. Sometimes just getting words on paper is an uphill struggle as he gnaws away at every word, every phrase, every image.
And now that I'm beginning to prepare The Steel Breeds True for indie publication, it's getting even worse. Not just is my writing good at the word and sentence level, but is the story any good? What if the whole thing is so stupid that people will laugh and point?
It's the problem of finding the balance between being relentlessly self-critical in order to attain our best and being able to believe in ourselves when nobody else does. I wish I could offer a nice pat answer for everybody out there who's struggling with the same problem, whether in the form of an unending stream of say-nothing form rejections or a serialized novel posted to a reception of such utter indifference that one is left almost wishing for a blistering review because it would mean that someone actually cared. But all I can offer right now is fellow-feel, the knowledge that you are not alone in your uphill struggles, and at least now you do have options beside struggling to fit through the narrow door that is so carefully guarded by the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Growing
On looking back at some old notes from a version of the Lanakhidzist Revolution I wrote in the 1980's, I realize how a number of characters who have turned out to be very important had their beginnings as bit characters whose names were tossed off rather casually.
Tikhon Chalkov was just a friend who helped Iosebi Lanakhidze at a key point in one of the early versions of Children's Crusade. There was never any hint of his being unusual in any way, and he never really held any major postings. But when I returned to the story in 2001, he turns out to be an unusually small, fine-boned man -- and as I realized that the Soviet cloning project was far larger than just a few clones of Stalin, I realized who he almost had to be, even if his name didn't follow the usual pattern in the Soviet cloning program of having the same forename as the original. And now he's not only the Minister of Security, but he's also firmly within Iosebi Lanakhidze's inner circle and a major POV character who effects major changes.
In the novel that would become The Steel Breeds True, Sergei Gerasimov was originally the least important of the three brothers, almost an afterthought who hung around on the edges but didn't take part in any of the major action. But when I returned to the novel in 2001, I realized that his name had to be significant, rather than just a cool Russian name -- and I finally knew why he and his brothers had fled the Soviet Union. Suddenly he came to the fore, becoming one of the most important characters in the novel, not to mention a critical link with the Lanakhidzist inner circle, once he recovered his other-memories and accepted his identity.
Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle underwent an even more extensive transformation between a couple of early versions of The Steel Breeds True. In the earliest version in which she appears, she is just "the professor's wife," with little or nothing in the way of characterization beyond being named Amanda. But as the story continued unfolding, I suddenly discovered she was a poet and that she wore her hair in an unusual triple braid from a common root. And then she got to be the star of her own side-story, "She's Leaving Home" (yes, the title is taken from the song by the Beatles) -- although some of the backstory in the current version of The Steel Breeds True is difficult to square with details in it (in particular, there is no mention of Arthur Lordsley's alcoholism, which plays an extensive role in the current versions of both The Steel Breeds True and The Ballad of Katie Hart).
Tikhon Chalkov was just a friend who helped Iosebi Lanakhidze at a key point in one of the early versions of Children's Crusade. There was never any hint of his being unusual in any way, and he never really held any major postings. But when I returned to the story in 2001, he turns out to be an unusually small, fine-boned man -- and as I realized that the Soviet cloning project was far larger than just a few clones of Stalin, I realized who he almost had to be, even if his name didn't follow the usual pattern in the Soviet cloning program of having the same forename as the original. And now he's not only the Minister of Security, but he's also firmly within Iosebi Lanakhidze's inner circle and a major POV character who effects major changes.
In the novel that would become The Steel Breeds True, Sergei Gerasimov was originally the least important of the three brothers, almost an afterthought who hung around on the edges but didn't take part in any of the major action. But when I returned to the novel in 2001, I realized that his name had to be significant, rather than just a cool Russian name -- and I finally knew why he and his brothers had fled the Soviet Union. Suddenly he came to the fore, becoming one of the most important characters in the novel, not to mention a critical link with the Lanakhidzist inner circle, once he recovered his other-memories and accepted his identity.
Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle underwent an even more extensive transformation between a couple of early versions of The Steel Breeds True. In the earliest version in which she appears, she is just "the professor's wife," with little or nothing in the way of characterization beyond being named Amanda. But as the story continued unfolding, I suddenly discovered she was a poet and that she wore her hair in an unusual triple braid from a common root. And then she got to be the star of her own side-story, "She's Leaving Home" (yes, the title is taken from the song by the Beatles) -- although some of the backstory in the current version of The Steel Breeds True is difficult to square with details in it (in particular, there is no mention of Arthur Lordsley's alcoholism, which plays an extensive role in the current versions of both The Steel Breeds True and The Ballad of Katie Hart).
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Just a Slight Shift in Perspective
I'd been stuck on a meeting scene in Chapter 7 of The Ballad of Katie Hart for ages. When I tried to move it forward, the dialog fell so flat that even the character in question commented upon the leadenness of his words.
And then I realized that the whole first part of it was solitary introspection on his part, which meant that there was no really good way to switch gears to interaction -- and it was made even worse by the first interaction being a formal address to the group as a whole, rather than interaction with any one individual.
Finally today I had a chance to sit down and rework it. After several false starts, I finally got a good beginning conversation going, and from then it was almost astonishingly easy to keep things moving forward. It also helped to have another character in the meeting scene burst out with a question, so that everyone started chiming in instead of politely waiting for the meeting leader to speak.
It's not perfect, and I need to see how it dovetails with another scene. But at least I think I finally have something I can work with.
And then I realized that the whole first part of it was solitary introspection on his part, which meant that there was no really good way to switch gears to interaction -- and it was made even worse by the first interaction being a formal address to the group as a whole, rather than interaction with any one individual.
Finally today I had a chance to sit down and rework it. After several false starts, I finally got a good beginning conversation going, and from then it was almost astonishingly easy to keep things moving forward. It also helped to have another character in the meeting scene burst out with a question, so that everyone started chiming in instead of politely waiting for the meeting leader to speak.
It's not perfect, and I need to see how it dovetails with another scene. But at least I think I finally have something I can work with.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
The Black Box
A few days ago, after having several repetitive dreams dealing with someone I knew at the University of Illinois, I decided to pull out The Ballad of Katie Hart and get back to work on it. It had stalled out in the seventh chapter and I'd never been able to get it going again.
And as I was thinking about the scene in which Sergei Gerasimov's clone-brother is talking with two of the Stalin clones and one makes a scathing remark about just what Katie sees in Ferdinand Yabur, and I realized that I had a major logic hole. Never once have I established what exactly had led to Katie becoming so emotionally obsessed with a man who was actively disliked by at least one major POV character, and who was despised by several others because of his obliviousness to the strife his wife was sowing.
Once I saw that logic hole, I also realized that the characters of both Ferdinand and Marie Yabur were effectively black boxes. Their inner lives were completely opaque to the reader, with no evidence of their motivations except those attributed to them by POV characters who had absolutely no reason to think well of them.
I think at least part of the problem is that the novel had its beginnings as a roman a clef, and Marie Yabur in particular was based upon someone I regarded as an implacable enemy. But to make it work, I somehow have to get inside the headspace of these two characters and find a way to show what is making them go.
And as I was thinking about the scene in which Sergei Gerasimov's clone-brother is talking with two of the Stalin clones and one makes a scathing remark about just what Katie sees in Ferdinand Yabur, and I realized that I had a major logic hole. Never once have I established what exactly had led to Katie becoming so emotionally obsessed with a man who was actively disliked by at least one major POV character, and who was despised by several others because of his obliviousness to the strife his wife was sowing.
Once I saw that logic hole, I also realized that the characters of both Ferdinand and Marie Yabur were effectively black boxes. Their inner lives were completely opaque to the reader, with no evidence of their motivations except those attributed to them by POV characters who had absolutely no reason to think well of them.
I think at least part of the problem is that the novel had its beginnings as a roman a clef, and Marie Yabur in particular was based upon someone I regarded as an implacable enemy. But to make it work, I somehow have to get inside the headspace of these two characters and find a way to show what is making them go.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
On Writer's Block
Recently I've been pulling out some of my old short stories, trying to decide what I want to do with them. However, it's proven harder than I'd anticipated.
In particular, I'm looking at several of them and trying to figure out what I even want to do with them. I wonder if I should completely redo them, or even toss them out altogether and start over, telling the stories afresh with completely new words.
And at the same time, I'm wondering if I'm becoming hypercritical, to the point that nothing looks good. There are points at which our awareness of writing craft outstrips our ability to actually produce, so we're left feeling like all our work is hopelessly inadequate.
In The Steel Breeds True, Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle is struggling with just such a period. Her internal editor, which has become externalized in her mind as a sort of miniature Yezhov, is continually telling her that every single word she puts on paper is trash. She is a published poet, who even has had her works picked up by textbooks and anthologies that pay her money, yet she is struggling with an overwhelming sense of complete inadequacy.
Is it any wonder that I, who have managed only occasional sales, should be wondering if everything I've written is a load of horse manure.
In particular, I'm looking at several of them and trying to figure out what I even want to do with them. I wonder if I should completely redo them, or even toss them out altogether and start over, telling the stories afresh with completely new words.
And at the same time, I'm wondering if I'm becoming hypercritical, to the point that nothing looks good. There are points at which our awareness of writing craft outstrips our ability to actually produce, so we're left feeling like all our work is hopelessly inadequate.
In The Steel Breeds True, Amanda Lordsley-Starcastle is struggling with just such a period. Her internal editor, which has become externalized in her mind as a sort of miniature Yezhov, is continually telling her that every single word she puts on paper is trash. She is a published poet, who even has had her works picked up by textbooks and anthologies that pay her money, yet she is struggling with an overwhelming sense of complete inadequacy.
Is it any wonder that I, who have managed only occasional sales, should be wondering if everything I've written is a load of horse manure.
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