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Bookkeeping: Lynch
Aug. 6th, 2012 01:14 pmThings are much more sane now that I'm writing. Well, they're sane in my head. I'm not certain the other members of my household like me living so much in my head when I'm writing, but the alternative is worse. And it was a good weekend for words.
New words: 918
Total words: 12,676
Mean things: abuse triggers; cat claws in his back; yet another trashing of his reputation and forced public acknowledgement of his disability (gotta watch that repetition, I think); nightmares playing out in real time.
Research: patterns of speech in 1909; newspaper accounts of national events which might have generated conversation (and thus realism).
I wrote the bit below just before my brain went offline for the night, and upon reading it this morning, I discovered I really liked it. So, knowing that darlings rarely survive rewriting, here's a snippet of the current work that is both enjoyable and coherent without being spoilerish:
Swallowing, he tried to push away the sensation of a yawning cliff face waiting for him to take just one more step. He'd seen what happened when men went over a cliff like that. Stone liked him, but the fall would still smash him to bits.
This is the character for whom I've jotted down "Remember that J is not a fainting princess; make sure he has agency!" Which translates to Jody faced with a waking nightmare and having to take steps to rescue himself...that's the next scene.
Do you know what that outline is really doing for me in this book? It's giving me the plot focus of the scene and letting my subconscious find its own route to the next way point. I do believe I am liking this method. It's really, really easy for me to get bogged down in tossing bad things at my characters and forget that there's a through-line for the scene, a reason we're facing those bad things to begin with. (Thus the reminder that the character must have agency!) This way, I get to indulge my need to make my characters suffer while still staying on course. The detail level of the outline means I only get just so far off track before realizing the mistake and correcting my heading.
Score one for the outliners. I'll always be a pantser at heart, but this time, the outline is working.
New words: 918
Total words: 12,676
Mean things: abuse triggers; cat claws in his back; yet another trashing of his reputation and forced public acknowledgement of his disability (gotta watch that repetition, I think); nightmares playing out in real time.
Research: patterns of speech in 1909; newspaper accounts of national events which might have generated conversation (and thus realism).
I wrote the bit below just before my brain went offline for the night, and upon reading it this morning, I discovered I really liked it. So, knowing that darlings rarely survive rewriting, here's a snippet of the current work that is both enjoyable and coherent without being spoilerish:
Swallowing, he tried to push away the sensation of a yawning cliff face waiting for him to take just one more step. He'd seen what happened when men went over a cliff like that. Stone liked him, but the fall would still smash him to bits.
This is the character for whom I've jotted down "Remember that J is not a fainting princess; make sure he has agency!" Which translates to Jody faced with a waking nightmare and having to take steps to rescue himself...that's the next scene.
Do you know what that outline is really doing for me in this book? It's giving me the plot focus of the scene and letting my subconscious find its own route to the next way point. I do believe I am liking this method. It's really, really easy for me to get bogged down in tossing bad things at my characters and forget that there's a through-line for the scene, a reason we're facing those bad things to begin with. (Thus the reminder that the character must have agency!) This way, I get to indulge my need to make my characters suffer while still staying on course. The detail level of the outline means I only get just so far off track before realizing the mistake and correcting my heading.
Score one for the outliners. I'll always be a pantser at heart, but this time, the outline is working.
