3 Green Fish

Progress continues to be slow. Which means only one thing: time for a new rubric! I’ve started on Draft 3 — but at the same time I really want to get to the end of any draft, as it helps to have the previous stuff there for when I get there in the new draft. So, here’s the new plan: the number before the / is my current total for the second draft, while the number after the / is my total pages of the third draft. As you can see, I have a whopping 4 pages there.

However, those 4 pages are in general better than the corresponding pages of the previous draft. My hope is to write enough of the third draft that I can nail down what I need to know about what my characters are up to that I can then simultaneously move forward to where my 2nd draft currently awaits expansion. Then I’ll be writing two stories at once, only they’ll be the same story. Wow!

My goal for November is now to write the third draft through the first main arc of the story — then finish a draft, one way or another. I have high hopes for the first one if I can get myself moving faster. The second goal is probably going to be a bit harder.

When it comes to film adaptations, superheroes and comic books get a very mixed treatment. Some are actually good, some are bad, and some are horrible. Consider Spiderman (good), Batman and Robin (horrible), or V for Vendetta (good despite its departures from the better comic book). The first Fantastic 4 movie was decent, although not brilliant by any means. I enjoyed it despite its shortcomings. It managed to encapsulate the drama of the comic book, primarily Ben Grimm’s trouble dealing with his transformation into the rocklike Thing.

And that brings me to Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. With The Thing’s story arc set and finished, the angst over the FF’s situation falls to Sue Storm, replacing genuine pathos with a whiny bridal obsession that doesn’t fit Jessica Alba very well. Instead of really sympathizing with her like I did with Grimm in the first movie, I found myself wanting to throttle her and say “you’re a super-celebrity and you’re marrying a workaholic made of rubber! You’re not going to have a normal wedding no matter how hard you try!” And then, after what seems like 45 minutes, the actual story begins.

Basically, the Silver Surfer comes down and wreaks havoc, preparing the Earth for being devoured by Galactus. Our bold heroes have to stop him while dealing with their own issues. The plotline follows a predictable path, and then Dr. Doom gets involved, and it continues to follow a predictable path. My biggest complaint? Galactus is a cloud. A cloud. Where’s the garish pink and purple armor and the ridiculous hat? Where’s Reed Richards threatening the gigantic Galactus with the absurdly tiny Ultimate Nullifier?

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, staring Ioan Gruffud, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis. Directed by Tim Story. 2007.

So, I’ve totally reinvisioned this story, and it’s starting to make more sense again. (This makes what, the third time this has happened? How many more times can I do this before I start losing credibility here?) I’ve had this issue where I have multiple plotlines all intersecting but none that really seem to drive the story — the main conflict always seemed to lack an antagonist, and while a better writer than I might be able to work it out, I think this story really needs a primary conflict to tie it all together. I think I have that now, and it will show up in the very first paragraph, which is also important given that it takes a while for other stuff to start.

I’ve also been thinking about my characters, and I’m really starting to get a handle on Bandolor and Iggsle more, while Adrianna recently came into stark relief for the first time (praise Apollo and all the muses). I think I finally understand her trauma and where she’s coming from — and why she ends up doing what she does. I see her driving force, and that’s huge.

Currently I have those same 107.5 pages of my second draft, plus 2 new pages of a 3rd draft that actually seems like it might work. Tonight I worked on character notes and plotted out all the scenes that I have written already. It’s a long list, and my plan is to go through them and reorder some things while really looking at what happens in each scene — what’s the conflict, and where are the characters coming from at this given point (by which I mean emotionally or in terms of trying to get what they want)?

So that’s where I am. It’s the beginning of November and I still feel like I’m just starting. I guess it’s not too surprising — the last novel I wrote took 9 months and that was just for one draft. Also, it isn’t really any good. So, all in all, I’ve made lots of progress so far on this one!

A little game for the Xbox 360 came out early this month: Halo 3. You may have heard of it. The conclusion to Bungie’s sci-fi first-person shooter trilogy grossed an ungodly $170 million the day of its release (the highest-grossing entertainment launch ever), gave the games division at Microsoft its second profitable quarter in said division’s history, and prompted Hollywood executives to blame it for poor box office sales. But is the game worth the hysteria? While it’s a solid game and undeniably fun to play, I have to say that it’s not the video game to end all video games, even if it made more money in a single day than the GDP of several small countries.

It’s been a while since I’ve played Halo 1 and 2, but I remember two things that bothered me when I did: the story was incoherent, and the designers never included a map, making it really easy to get lost. At first I thought the level design was better in Halo 3 than its predecessors, but that was mostly because I was playing co-operatively with someone who knew where he was going. When I played a level with another newcomer to the game I had just the same old issues of “where am I going?” and “how do I get there?” Some games try to put you on rails, and some give you multiple options of where to go and what to do. Both can be fine, but I do get a little annoyed when a game only gives you one way forward and makes it hard to tell which way it is.

The storyline is almost impossible to follow, but there are a few very satisfying moments (and a few overly dramatic moments that flop). I’d have liked to see more of the alternate weapons lying around — while there were a nice variety of weapons to be had, it was rare to see more than just the basic ones. All those gripes aside, and I realize that’s a solid paragraph of complaints, Halo 3 is superbly paced. The game keeps you sucked in to the action, and there’s no real breaking point in the campaign — you just don’t want to stop. Bungie clearly focused their efforts on pumping the gameplay full of excitement, and the end result turned out quite well.

So I’ve been thinking about infanticide.

I don’t remember where I read it, but some author mentioned something about “killing your babies” when it comes to writing fiction. A morbid metaphor, indeed, but I’m thinking it might really be an apt one. What it refers to are those moments or scenes or whatever in a story that you’re so attached to that you just don’t want to let go. Those are usually the moments or scenes or sentences that really need to be cut. Kill your babies, indeed.

In my case, I think of this one scene pretty early on, where Adrianna is sitting on the plateau with Bandolor and looking out over the town, and the forests, and the bay in the distance. The sun sets and the stars come out and she looks up and realizes, “hey, those are the exact same stars as the ones back home.” I like the poetic imagery that comes to mind (disclaimer: none of said poetic imagery may be included in the actual scene as written), and when I rearranged some stuff in the early chapters I worked things out awkwardly so I could still include it. I’m thinking now that perhaps I need to cut that out. Do you really need to be up on a mountain to see the stars?

Well, around here, the answer is probably yes. Because of the light pollution. Not where Adrianna is, though.

The other thing I’m really coming to grips with is just how much every part of the story needs to depend on relationships. A scene is, fundamentally, an examination of how two or more characters interact, or how a single character interacts with an inanimate object. When I get to the end of this book I think the first thing I’ll do is go back and divide everything up into small sections, scene by scene or theme by theme, and really look at just how the characters interact — is there progress? Do things change? Obviously, sometimes the plot needs to move on without the characters coming to huge realizations, but I don’t need to put all my imaginary people on a train to the end of the story. They can walk. Heck, they can even get out and push if I do it right.

Everyone has secrets. Everyone wants something. Everyone has something that drives them. Everyone has something that complicates them. I’m only just now discovering what those are for some of my characters. It’s an exhausting process. Also, on an unrelated note, the end of this story keeps on getting more complicated. It’ll be a righteous bang if I can pull it all off right.

Today’s quote is from the introduction of two farmers involved in a land dispute over the Bog of Sorrows:

Adrianna met the farmers in the kitchen, where she found them sitting on opposite sides of the table, glaring at each other. Of the two, Hamel Borde was meaty and thick-necked, with the largest jugular veins Adrianna had ever seen, while Teppyk Wootton, balding and beady-eyed, looked something like a gnome by comparison despite his average size.

It’s fascinating how some parts of this book are easy to write, while others are more like dragging my legs through a desert of broken glass using only a stick of gum. After wrapping up the last section, getting this little bit going seems to be a bit of an issue. I have a feeling that my “first” full draft is going to end up a hodgepodge of scenes and plotlines that don’t all quite fit together. That’s okay, I guess. Youv’e gotta start somewhere!

Having established subplot 1, I’ve started to work on the backstory with Erskavit O’Sorce and all that sort of things. This little section I’m working on right now has some info about that (it helps to have old guys like Silas sitting around waiting for attention):

“Erskavit was a powerful sorcerer, but his blood betrayed him. His lineage was cursed with madness, and e’en a sorcerer cannot defy such a fate. Where most sorcerers store their will in objects, words, and motions, Erskavit stored his solely in his words. His voice became his will, his every breath a sorcery. ’Twas not long ere all that remained of his mind was word and word alone.”

Today we come to a new milestone: an even 100 pages of novel. Most of that is only of middling quality, but I take my wins where I can get them. At least much of those 100 pages will probably end up in the final book in some form or another. My word count is currently up to ~65,000 words, which isn’t bad, but could be better. Another 15,000 words and it’ll move up to 4th place on my Top 15 Longest Stories and Series, narrowly edging out my ThatPlace series.

Okay, I’m done boring you all with lots of numbers. You can come back now, all right? Hello?

One thing that’s really helped the last few days has been thinking of the story as a series of short stories, tightly interwoven. Most books have a rising action throughout that climaxes towards the end, and most good books have a series of mini-climaxes throughout. I don’t know if I managed to really make this one of those, but at least I’ve gotten a little cycle going. Thinking of the book in terms of short stories kind of helps me separate out how things fit together and where I need to focus. My first 85 page suffer a little from my tendency to try to write everything out in a continuous chronology. By skipping ahead to part 2 (admittedly, I wasn’t skipping more than, say, 15 pages or so), I was able to break out of that a little and use scene breaks better. I think it holds together better this way.

The other thing I did today was map out parts 2 and 3 a little. I already had a tiny little list of important plots points, but now I have it expanded a little to also be divided into sections. Will these be chapters? I don’t know. The chapters might break in the middle of these bits, even, if I find a dramatic pause in the right place. The important thing is that I can work on each section at a time without having to worry so much about the whole thing.

As you can probably imagine, this is something of a relief.

Most importantly, though . . . 100 pages! Woo! Party!

Well, I’m approaching 100 pages, a nice little milestone. I’ve still got a long way to go to the end, however, and no one knows how many of those 100 pages I’ll be cutting out later or rewriting entirely.

Today I worked on a little scene between Iggsle and Adrianna. Simplifying the dialogue helps it move along faster, and in this case I had a very strong idea of what I wanted the interaction to be, so that helped a lot. It wasn’t like I was rambling on and on, like I sometimes do — the whole scene was less than a page long, but it helped to set up some boundaries and conflicts and do a little foreshadowing. Fun.

And, just for kicks, here’s a quote that’s almost guaranteed to get a snarky response from Jacob:

She sipped at her soup and was surprised to find it flavorful in a way that wasn’t overpowered by onions and leeks. Bits of cabbage graced her bowl, and the broth was red with what could only be tomatoes. She looked up in surprise and Iggsle gave her a sly grin. “Don’t tell Fink. He won’t notice if ye don’t. I went to the market in town while ye were toiling.”
“My lips are sealed,” Adrianna told him.
“Nay, nay, eat your soup. ’Tis the purpose of lips alderfirst.”

Big changes afoot here. If you read my “Seven Steps for Writing a Novel” you’ll probably be able to guess that I spent most of the last week or so in Step 6, which is not a good place to be. Since my last update I’ve managed to add pages at an agonizingly slow rate. When I only add two paragraphs my excitement about posting an update dims a little.

However, I have come to a couple of realizations that I think will help me continue. First of all, I realized that everything needs to be a little more connected, and it just kind of popped into my head that Bandolor and Erskavit (now just the Tongue of Erskavit) should have a past together. Not dating or something really weird like that, but a history of conflict. So now they do, and that actually shines a lot of light on Bandolor’s character and why he’s so driven towards what others call heresy.

Secondly, it’s becoming really clear that trying to do crazy language stuff just isn’t working. I’ve been pulling back on that a lot, but I think the time has come to rearrange a few things in my head and keep the archaic syntax and the “thous” while tossing the plan to use older words and the like. Except for Fink. He gets to keep on being incomprehensible, because I find that endearing somehow.

Relationships. I’ve got to remember that every story is about relationships. Plot is great, and it provides a structure for characters to interact, but the real story is in the interaction, not the action.

Finally, I’m back to thinking of things in a smaller sense. The section I’m working on right now, while skipping ahead from where I was at before, is more or less self-contained. There’s an arc in these 3-4 scenes and if I can get it right, that’ll be great. Does it resolve anything? No, not really. But it kind of cycles back on itself, or something.

I based Erskavit’s writing style on that of Herodotus:

Like a caged beast, Adrianna paced back and forth in Bandolor’s study, her eyes prowling across the pages of Bandolor’s books. Already hampered by her difficulty understanding the letters on the page, Adrianna quickly grew frustrated by the ramblings of a madman. He was boot-eating crazy, and his mind wandered in every direction simultaneously, short digressions flowing into torrential tangents, and those tangents in turn eclipsed by further departure from his original point, until all his loopy thinking formed a Russian doll of tangents nestled within each other.

(Argh. I think I used the word “tangent” too many times in that paragraph.)

For all you aspiring novelists out there, I’ve slapped together a handy guide for writing your first books. Seven steps are all you need, apparently. I think I’m currently at Step 7.

1. Afflatus
That’s a sudden rush of divine inspiration, for those with a juvenile sense of humor. Step 1 is basically the idea that starts it all, the muse’s key fob that unlocks the car doors so you can hop inside and go someplace. It’s possible to skip this step, as untold numbers of books can attest, but it’s unadvised. The afflatus is the foundation on which you build your story (see the clever construction pun? Man, this is high quality stuff here).

2. Blueprint
An inspired idea is all well and good, but you’ll need to expand on it to get it to a point where you actually have a story. Two guys in a pizza parlor might really get your moustache twirling, but there’s no story there until you figure out, at the least, why they might be sitting there. For some people, Step 2 is an outline of an entire story, divided into scenes and all perfectly set and ready. For everyone else, those people are really, really annoying.

3. Foreplay
Oh yeah, baby. Sometimes you’ve got to work at it, and sometimes it’s just fun, but either way, you’ve got to start somewhere. Step 3 is where you actually sit down and begin writing. The key here is to get as much written down before Step 4 happens, but don’t rush it, because then you might burn out and hit Step 4 sooner rather than later.

4. Uncomfortable Silences
At a certain part, you’ll start to notice issues with what you’ve already written. Maybe things aren’t flowing as well as you’d hoped, or maybe you see things about your characters that you really need to address. Step 4 is really dangerous – if it’s too much, you risk throwing out the whole novel and never, EVER going back to it.

5. Spackle
Okay, so maybe it isn’t as bad as you thought. Patch up a hole here, cover up a crack there, and you can keep on going. Sometimes more problems crop up in the process. Ignore them and move along. After all, you’ll be writing a second draft anyway, and you can handle those issues then.

6. Despair
Remember those little pockmarks you said you could overlook? Turns out there’s so many of them that your little book looks like Swiss cheese, and it’s been left out in the sun too long. It’s starting to smell a little, and that’s never a good sign. Nothing’s working the way you want it to, and somebody ended up dead who was supposed to be in the sequel. Just try to remember that, as much as you might think you know what your novel is about when you start it, your book’s essence comes after its existence, just like you. Yeah, your book is an existentialist.

7. The Last Thing in Pandora’s Box
No, not hope, but if you’re lucky it’ll be enough to get you out of Step 6. Here we have another inspiration, a sudden realization about your world or your characters or something, that puts the entire project in new light. Not quite worthy of being called an afflatus, this inspiration can redefine your novel and get back on track. Return to Step 2. Don’t worry, you’ll get back here eventually.