Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 209

Cherry Saturday 4-29-2017

Today is Save the Frogs Day.

That includes the frogs that get you out from under yarn projects that you have decided you no longer want to pursue.

No, not that kind of crochet frog, although Henri is really cute.

This kind, where you rip-it, rip-it:

And of course, the original Save the Frogs song:

 

 

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Your Moment of Dog: The Don’t Fence Me In Version

Three times a day, we go out to the yard.  (There’s a dog door out to the back that they can take any time they want, but we also do the formal bolt-for-the-side-yard.  I shut them in and go do things like wake up or start lunch and then go back to see Mona and Veronica looking at me through the pickets, tragedy in canine form.

Since we do this three times a day every damn day, it’s lost its pathos, but I let them out and they race back to the house, free at last.  Except today Milton was busy with a piece of cardboard he’d found, so I let the girls out, closed the gate, and went back in the house to make sure the girls had gotten in okay.  

When I came back out ten minutes later, there was this:

There’s a reason my across-the-street neighbor calls Milton “Houdini.”  Now I have to put a rock there to slow him down.  

OTOH, he’s really cute, even with his head stuck in a picket fence.

This has been your Moment of Dog.

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Good Book Thursday 4-27-17

 

Welcome back to  This Is a Really Good Book Thursday. Tell us the title and author of something delightful to read, fiction or non-fiction.  The weekend is coming and we need good books!

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Questionable: Plotting Multiple Antagonists

Brooke asked:

“Are there four separate but not equal antagonists, or one antagonist and three minions [in The Devil in Nita Dodd]?”

There’s always only one main antagonist in a classic linear story because you can only have one climax with the obligatory scene of the protagonist and the antagonist facing each other in final battle.  

But you can have subplots that the protagonist and (in this case) her team* have to clear out of the way to get to the Big Bad.  In the best of all possible worlds, you have one main antagonist and a couple of subplots that aren’t life or death, say family or work.  In this case, which I do not recommend, I ended up with five different factions fighting for different things:

So these five different factions at work on the island are represented by the ovals.  The boxes cover up the characters who are either part of those factions or who are innocently working within them, unaware of how nefarious their leaders are, and who won’t be a problem, but who do add to the strength of the faction.  Some of those characters are part of more than one faction, using one against the other or playing them off against each other for their own ends.  The names outside of the circles aren’t part of the factions, they’re just going about their lives but are getting looped in as innocent bystanders (example: Joey).  Each one of those factions has one driving force who makes things happen to achieve his or her own ends, but only one of those characters is the Antagonist.  The rest are subplots or barriers that Our Gang has to clear out of the way to get to the truth, stopping a lot of bad along the way. 

That’s Our Gang in the middle there.  

I know all the characters, I know all the goals and motivations, now I just have to figure out how the dominoes fall.  The first domino is Joey’s shooting; that’s the thread Nita will pull on to get started on her investigation, but Nick’s thread is Forcas which leads him to Richiel (end of Act One turning point) which takes out the head of one of the factions but still leaves the minions to take out.  Faction 3 leads them to Faction 2 and Faction 4, and those in turn lead to 5 and then to 1, at the climax.  I still have a lot of plotting to do, but know how these are all connected and how one will organically lead to another means that I at least have a road map.

And I’m never going to do this many antagonistic factions again.  I think it’s right for this book, but for any other, how screwed up would a protagonist have to be to have this many groups gunning for her?

*About that team:

Nita/Nick: Leader/Lancer

Chloe: Hitter

Rab: Researcher/Hacker/Brains

Max: Grifter/Thief

It’s Nita’s book, so she should be the leader, but one of the things she and Nick work out early on is that they’re dealing with two different spheres.  So if the group they’re fighting is human, Nita’s got the lead; if they’re demon, Nick takes point, until the end when Nita gets the final scene because it’s her damn book and because of a plot point I’m not going to spoil for you.  :p

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WWtAD?

I’m working on the rest of the book now, back in Discovery Draft, but I’m far enough along that I need  to know What Would The Antagonist Do?

I have my antagonists.  There are four separate groups working on the island, all chasing four wildly different goals with wildly different motivations and led by wildly different people.  Unfortunately, I can only have one Antagonist, Nita’s opposite number, the person who’s the greatest danger, the one who’s manipulating the other sub-antagonists, the person Nita will face in the obligatory scene.  And praise the Girls, I figured that out.  Now all I have to do is develop character and plot a bunch of turning points.  

First I have to make sure they’re all serious antagonists and that at least the last one is smarter than Nita, stronger than Nita, and more ruthless than Nita.  I can make one or two of them minimally hapless since I have so many, but they’ll be the first ones defeated (one has already gone up in flames at the first turning point).  The real Big Bad is the one I have to take most seriously, know as well as I know Nita and Nick, and find a way to like and root for.  He or she can’t just be the Big Bad, the antagonist has to be a fully developed character.  I’m not sure I’ll ever like this character, but this one is fun to write, so that may be good enough.

Then I have to plot the turning points for each of the antagonists.  That is, I have to know the events that occur in each antagonist’s plot that turn that character’s story in a new direction,  events that are concurrent or at least closely aligned with Nita and Nick’s turning points.  Why?  Because this book is crazy with plot and the only thing that will keep it from getting away from me is to tie it down at those plot points.  Once I have those four scenes for each antagonist, I’ll have an event to write to as I noodle around, something to aim at.    And since there are four turning points and four antagonists, it makes sense to knock an antagonist off at each turning point, clearing the field so that the last turning point, the climax, is only with the real antagonist, Nita’s opposite number.  

Which is why I’m currently surrounded by sheets of graph paper with squares and arrows and colored inks and a blank calendar, trying to figure this out.  Once I get past the messy part, I’ll map it in Curio.  And in the meantime, I’ll keep writing.  All of which is to say, there may not be a lot of posts this week, although the Good Book post and the Cherry Saturday post are already set to go.   As always, feel free to talk amongst yourselves in the comments.   That’s where the good stuff always is anyway.

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Cherry Saturday 4-22-2017

Today is Earth Day. Trying to imaging what Trump is going to do with this one, since he praised Frederick Douglass for all the good work he’s doing for Black History Month: “somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Since he has previously suggested that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, I’m assuming he’ll burn an endangered species while strip mining Yellowstone and talking about his YUGE victory. (You lost by more than three million votes, Donald. You’re a loser.)

Fuck that. It’s Jelly Bean Day.

Not even Donald Trump can destroy jelly beans.

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The Paper Cut

One of the weirdest things I discovered early in my career was that a story I’ve been writing on a screen not only looks completely different on the page, it reads completely different on the page.  

That’s why a paper edit is crucial.

 

I print the book out and it’s new again, places where there are holes in the story are glaringly clear, places I can easily cut leap out at me.  It’s just a brand new story, and that’s invaluable.  So why don’t I do the whole thing on paper?  Have you forgotten how many drafts I do and how much I change things?  If I didn’t have a computer, I don’t think I’d write, it would just be too damn hard.  (Pat Gaffney and Krissie both write drafts in longhand; I cannot comprehend that.).  

I couldn’t wait to get to the paper edit of this act because I really, really, really wanted to read it for the first time.  I did manage to do another major cut before I printed it out, taking it from 41,000 to 35,000, but one of the many great things about a paper edit is that I find a lot more places to cut.  Red ink everywhere.  Tags showing me how often a  motif is repeated.  Notes about what to work throughout the act.  Notes about the rest of the book.  Stains from tea and Diet Coke.  Dog hair.  It’s all in there.

And then all those changes went back into the computer; I’m not insane.  But when I get the other three acts done, I’ll do another paper edit.  It’s the only way to really see the book.  (Yes, Pam, I’m saving them for you.)

 

Did you want to read it?  . .I’d think you’d be sick of it by now, but if not, here it is.

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Good Book Thursday 4-20-17

 

Hey, it’s this Is a Really Good Book Thursday.  Tell us the title and author of something delightful to read, fiction or non-fiction.  The weekend is coming and we need good books!

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Not Dead Yet

I’ve been working on the paper edit, cleaning house (the never-ending job), and hosting Krissie and Lani and Sweetness and Light, so I haven’t been here.  But I’ve been working, I swear.  Doing the second pass through on the paper edit on Act One, so that’ll be up soon (Krissie goes home tomorrow).  And Lani took a big bag of yarn home, and Krissie’s car is packed to the roof with it.  That sounds like an exaggeration,but it’s not.  Here’s what my living room looked like when we started:

[image error]Yes, I have a yarn problem, although it’s much less since I filled Krissie’s car with the stuff. And in my defense, I dumped it all in the middle of the room to sort it; it had been on shelves around the room, not piled on the floor like that.  

We also went shopping and I bought birdhouses to put on my fenceposts, so I’ll be doing that this week.  And I think I’ve figured out how to put a ceiling in my bedroom, so there’s that.  And tonight I’m cleaning out my closet so Krissie will have more bags to put in her car..  So I’ve been VERY productive.  

And I did keep working on the paper edit.  I have a ton of notes to double check, but mostly I am ready to charge on to the last three acts, which should be roughly 65,000 words and I have 30,000 words already, although you know how that goes, I’ll have to cut a lot of them.  

Mostly we just laughed.

 

 

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Cherry Saturday 4-15-2017

Today is Rubber Eraser Day.

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Try to imagine a world without the ability to erase mistakes. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

(Actually, my fave eraser is a Mars Staedtler white..)

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