Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 212

Rewrite Exhaustion

No, not me, I’m pretty chipper here, getting plenty of sleep, beautiful day, everything’s fine. 

I’m talking about exhausting my text by rewriting.  

There comes a time when I’m not rewriting any more, I’m just washing garbage.  That is, there’s good stuff in there, but the scene itself is so compromised that doing it again and again is just nuts: I’ve washed all the life out of the scene and now I’m just scrubbing at the structure points.  It becomes incomprehensible.  

In the case of the breakfast scene, I have seven different versions in a desktop file, and that’s not counting the others that are stashed in folders in Dropbox.  So I’ve been reading through them and trying to combine them and I finally thought, This is nuts.  You know this is nuts.  

The thing is, I write stories because I like writing, not revising.  Revising is necessary and I do like analyzing and seeing the bones of the scene under the words, but the words are still what’s important.  So while the breakfast scene is crucial and has to accomplish a lot, it’s not a set of Lego blocks, it’s a story.  And I don’t assemble stories, I write them.

So the breakfast file folder is now closed, and I’m writing the scene from scratch.  Well, not scratch: I know everything that’s going to happen in it, I know the shape of it, I have an outline of it, I know what comes before it and what comes after it.  But all of that is the reason I have to start over and write it fresh.  The previous drafts exhausted that version of the scene.  I’ve got too much new information about it now, the scenes around it have changed too much.  

.The one tip-off that I’m doing the right thing?  It’s such a relief.  I love writing and this scene has so much good, fun stuff in it.  I needed to write the other versions to get here, but now it’s time to set them free and write the scene as it’s meant to be.

Now, it’s fun again.

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Link

Comments aren’t enabled on this post because it’s just a link; the discussion goes here which is where I’ve put a permanent link to the section of the truck draft discussed there. This is just a head’s up which will be deleted in a couple of days. Part Three: Double Scene Sequence

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Cherry Saturday: 3-25-2017

Today is Tolkien Reading Day.

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Act One, Part Three: Double Scene Sequence

One way to describe the difference between discovery drafts and truck drafts is that discovery drafts are “this happens and then this happens and this happens,” and truck drafts are “and this is what those things mean.” The way to do that isn’t by telling the reader what the stuff means; it’s by putting the action on the page in a way that leads the reader to interpret subconsciously what it means. Structure is one excellent way to communicate meaning. So this chunk of narrative is two scenes (one in Button’s PoV, one in Nita’s) in which they discuss the partnership and then find somebody waiting to kill Nita whom Button shoots, and two scenes where Nick talks to Dag and Rab and discusses the investigation and also finds out more about Dag. There’s nothing wrong with any of this except that Nita and Button’s conflict is resolved in the first scene, both of Nick’s scenes are chat not conflict, and there’s no relationship between Nita’s scenes and Nick’s scenes. Other than that, everything is fine. Argh.

Scene sequences are units of narrative that are just like scenes. While each scene in a scene sequence has to be complete in and of itself, it also has to fit into the meaning and structure of the sequence as a whole, just as the sequence has to fit into the meaning and structure of the act as a whole and the act has to fit into the meaning and structure of the novel as a whole. When you take two scene sequences and weave them together, moving back and forth between them, you’ve created another narrative unit: the double scene sequence, which as to work as a whole, too. Which is complicated. So the first thing I do is look at the structure I already have: The person who opens the narrative owns the narrative, and in this case it’s Nick. Except Nick’s scenes are low key and Nita gets the guy with the gun. Also this is Nita’s book and she should get this sequence; Nick can have the next one. So the first thing I do is put Nita first. But equally important is that Nita get the last word, so she needs to be last, too. So now we have this: Now Nita owns this narrative section. Next step: Figure out what each scene sequence means and how the scenes escalate to a climax. Nita’s sequence starts with Button in the car saying “We need to talk” and ends with Button saying, “Okay, I’m your partner.” She already did this in the first scene (which I can fix) but when she really needs to say it is the last scene in this sequence. In other words the events of this sequence have to be the start of the Nita/Button partnership brought about by the events of these three scenes. In scene one, Button expresses her doubts about the partnership but in the end tells Nita about the Lieutenant, establishing that she wants to play fair and not take sides. In scene two, Button shoots the guy trying to kill Nita. In scene three, Nita takes the rap for Button. Depending on how I revise it, that should show, not tell, the reader that these two are becoming partners because they both do things that are extreme to protect the other.

Nick’s sequence is a hella lot of infodump in the guise of plot: Dag and Rab tell Nick stuff and Nick gives orders. I’d have to fix that anyway, but since this is part of the larger narrative chunk, I need to make this parallel to or at least echo Nita’s scene sequence. The best way to do that is to show Nick’s relationship with Dag and Rab evolving through events the way Nita and Button’s partnership is evolving in their sequence. Nick’s never going to be partners with Dag and Rab, at least not in this act: He’s the Devil Elect and they’re his agents. But showing that the way he works with them changes can also show that he’s changing. The fact that he’s noticing emotions in Dag and Rab is a big clue that he’s developing empathy again; their surprise that he’s asking them not what they think but how they feel about things and the freedom that gives them to express themselves outside of agent talk shifts their relationships.

At the end of both of these sequences, the two teams should have evolved, not necessarily cementing the relationships but definitely foreshadowing that these two groups of people are going to stick together with their groups for reasons other than duty. But I’d like another relationship arced in this double sequence: the Nita and Nick relationship. They’re apart, which is frustrating for romance readers (still not sure this is a romance, but if it isn’t, the secondary plot is). I can’t put them together, but I can keep them thinking about each other.

For the Nick scenes, that’s easy: he’s investigating her. For the Nita scenes, it’s harder because she has other things on her mind, but I think he’d be in there–she just saw him as a skeleton, that’s gonna leave a mark–but the fact that she told him he was under suspicion and that she’d be back to question him should at least make her wonder if he hadn’t sent the shooter.

And then there are the transitions between the scenes, those little gray arrows in the diagram. Nita’s first scene ends when Button gets out of the car; Nick’s first scene begins (in this rewrite) when Dag comes into the apartment. The next Nita scene begins when Nita gets out of the car and follows Button, so I need something at the end of the Nick-vs-Dag scene that somehow sets that up. The second Nita scene ends when Nita takes the gun and shoots the corpse so that she can take the blame for it, and the second (and last) Nick scene is Rab coming in. If I shift Rab’s entrance to the end of the first Nick scene, I’ll have Nita getting out of the car and Rab coming in, which is weak but better than nothing. Then the third and last Nita scene is Mort coming in and the corpse disappearing. Nick’s second scene ends with Rab leaving, so that balances Mort coming in. I’m not sure that really works–most narratives start with somebody either coming in or leaving a stable situation so it’s pretty generic–but it does set up echoes, faint though they may be. And the fact that both sequences are working toward building teams also helps.
Edited to Add: I still haven’t fixed the transitions.  Argh.

And then there are the character arcs. Button grows closer to Nita as Dag and Rab develop a more personal relationship with Nick. Nita gets hit with more proof of the supernatural and Nick gets hit with more proof of his humanity, and they both deny it. At the ends of their sequences, both Nita and Nick are more driven than ever to find out about each other, each seeing the other as the key to the investigation (they’re not wrong). That sets up the breakfast scene where Nick sits down at Nita’s table and she lets him: they’re both after information. So this narrative section is about evolving the teams (which will become one), developing the subtext of the Nita and Nick relationship, and showing the beginnings of the arc of Nita accepting the supernatural both without and within and Nick accepting the return of the natural in his life, both without and within. I think if I can do all of that (okay, I’ve done a lot of that, I haven’t been sitting here on my thumb all week), I can declare this in its truck draft stage and go on to the rewrite of the breakfast scene (in which I have already incorporated your feedback, so thank you very much for that). And then after that is the next double scene sequence which belongs to Nick, and that throws the act into its last sequence which is Nita and Nick together investigating something horrible while fighting both each other and the growing awareness that things aren’t what either of them assume, ending with the climax of the act where they both have to accept that their worlds just blew up. All the while keeping Nita and Nick alive on the page and the action moving and . . .

Writing is hard.

 

 

 

 

Edited to Add:

I still don’t have the Nick scenes right, they’re pretty much discovery drafts since I rewrote them almost completely, but I have to let them go for now and move on.  Same for the transitions.  

Here’s the link to Part Three.

The post Act One, Part Three: Double Scene Sequence appeared first on Argh Ink.

Act One, Part Three: Alternating Scene Sequences

One way to describe the difference between discovery drafts and truck drafts is that discovery drafts are “this happens and then this happens and this happens,” and truck drafts are “and this is what those things mean.” The way to do that isn’t by telling the reader what the stuff means; it’s by putting the action on the page in a way that leads the reader to interpret subconsciously what it means. Structure is one excellent way to communicate meaning.

So this chunk of narrative is two scenes (one in Button’s PoV, one in Nita’s) in which they discuss the partnership and then find somebody waiting to kill Nita whom Button shoots, and two scenes where Nick talks to Dag and Rab and discusses the investigation and also finds out more about Dag. There’s nothing wrong with any of this except that Nita and Button’s conflict is resolved in the first scene, both of Nick’s scenes are chat not conflict, and there’s no relationship between Nita’s scenes and Nick’s scenes. Other than that, everything is fine. Argh.

Scene sequences are units of narrative that are just like scenes. While each scene in a scene sequence has to be complete in and of itself, it also has to fit into the meaning and structure of the sequence as a whole, just as the sequence has to fit into the meaning and structure of the act as a whole and the act has to fit into the meaning and structure of the novel as a whole. When you take two scene sequences and weave them together, moving back and forth between them, you’ve created another narrative unit: the double scene sequence, which as to work as a whole, too.

Which is complicated.

So the first thing I do is look at the structure I already have:

The person who opens the narrative owns the narrative, and in this case it’s Nick. Except Nick’s scenes are low key and Nita gets the guy with the gun. Also this is Nita’s book and she should get this sequence; Nick can have the next one. So the first thing I do is put Nita first. But equally important is that Nita get the last word, so she needs to be last, too. So now we have this:

Now Nita owns this narrative section.

Next step: Figure out what each scene sequence means and how the scenes escalate to a climax.

Nita’s sequence starts with Button in the car saying “We need to talk” and ends with Button saying, “Okay, I’m your partner.” She already did this in the first scene (which I can fix) but when she really needs to say it is the last scene in this sequence. In other words the events of this sequence have to be the start of the Nita/Button partnership brought about by the events of these three scenes. In scene one, Button expresses her doubts about the partnership but in the end tells Nita about the Lieutenant, establishing that she wants to play fair and not take sides. In scene two, Button shoots the guy trying to kill Nita. In scene three, Nita takes the rap for Button. Depending on how I revise it, that should show, not tell, the reader that these two are becoming partners because they both do things that are extreme to protect the other.

Nick’s sequence is a hella lot of infodump in the guise of plot: Dag and Rab tell Nick stuff and Nick gives orders. I’d have to fix that anyway, but since this is part of the larger narrative chunk, I need to make this parallel to or at least echo Nita’s scene sequence. The best way to do that is to show Nick’s relationship with Dag and Rab evolving through events the way Nita and Button’s partnership is evolving in their sequence. Nick’s never going to be partners with Dag and Rab, at least not in this act: He’s the Devil Elect and they’re his agents. But showing that the way he works with them changes can also show that he’s changing. The fact that he’s noticing emotions in Dag and Rab is a big clue that he’s developing empathy again; their surprise that he’s asking them not what they think but how they feel about things and the freedom that gives them to express themselves outside of agent talk shifts their relationships. At the end of both of these sequences, the two teams should have evolved, not necessarily cementing the relationships but definitely foreshadowing that these two groups of people are going to stick together with their groups for reasons other than duty.

But I’d like another relationship arced in this double sequence: the Nita and Nick relationship. They’re apart, which is frustrating for romance readers (still not sure this is a romance, but if it isn’t, the secondary plot is). I can’t put them together, but I can keep them thinking about each other. For the Nick scenes, that’s easy: he’s investigating her. For the Nita scenes, it’s harder because she has other things on her mind, but I think he’d be in there–she just saw him as a skeleton, that’s gonna leave a mark–but the fact that she told him he was under suspicion and that she’d be back to question him should at least make her wonder if he hadn’t sent the shooter.

And then there are the transitions between the scenes, those little gray arrows in the diagram. Nita’s first scene ends when Button gets out of the car; Nick’s first scene begins (in this rewrite) when Dag comes into the apartment. The next Nita scene begins when Nita gets out of the car and follows Button, so I need something at the end of the Nick-vs-Dag scene that somehow sets that up. The second Nita scene ends when Nita takes the gun and shoots the corpse so that she can take the blame for it, and the second (and last) Nick scene is Rab coming in. If I shift Rab’s entrance to the end of the first Nick scene, I’ll have Nita getting out of the car and Rab coming in, which is weak but better than nothing. Then the third and last Nita scene is Mort coming in and the corpse disappearing. Nick’s second scene ends with Rab leaving, so that balances Mort coming in. I’m not sure that really works–most narratives start with somebody either coming in or leaving a stable situation so it’s pretty generic–but it does set up echoes, faint though they may be. And the fact that both sequences are working toward building teams also helps.

And then there are the character arcs. Button grows closer to Nita as Dag and Rab develop a more personal relationship with Nick. Nita gets hit with more proof of the supernatural and Nick gets hit with more proof of his humanity, and they both deny it. At the ends of their sequences, both Nita and Nick are more driven than ever to find out about each other, each seeing the other as the key to the investigation (they’re not wrong). That sets up the breakfast scene where Nick sits down at Nita’s table and she lets him: they’re both after information.

So this narrative section is about evolving the teams (which will become one), developing the subtext of the Nita and Nick relationship, and showing the beginnings of the arc of Nita accepting the supernatural both without and within and Nick accepting the return of the natural in his life, both without and within.

I think if I can do all of that (okay, I’ve done a lot of that, I haven’t been sitting here on my thumb all week), I can declare this in its truck draft stage and go on to the rewrite of the breakfast scene (in which I have already incorporated your feedback, so thank you very much for that). And then after that is the next double scene sequence which belongs to Nick, and that throws the act into its last sequence which is Nita and Nick together investigating something horrible while fighting both each other and the growing awareness that things aren’t what either of them assume, ending with the climax of the act where they both have to accept that their worlds just blew up.

All the while keeping Nita and Nick alive on the page and the action moving and . . .

Writing is hard.

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Rewriting Double Scene Sequences, Part One

So. The next chunk. It’s boring.

That’s not exactly true, Nita almost gets killed, so that’s good, but there’s still too much chat. (I love dialogue.) And Nick’s stuff is deadly dull. The structure doesn’t help; it’s two scene sequences spliced together which insures that one of those sequences will be annoying because it’ll take people away from the one they liked. So here’s what I need to do:

1. Take the scenes out of the draft and separate them into Nita/Button PoV scenes in one file and Nick scenes in the other.

2. Read the Nita scenes as one scene (even though they switch PoVs; I’ll cut them apart again later) to make sure that while they each are scenes in and of themselves (protagonist, antagonist, goals, conflict, climax), they also work as a whole. Also make some key content changes that I realized I needed as I worked through the draft.

3. Take the Nick scenes apart completely and divide them into two conversations–Nick vs. Dag and then Nick vs. Rab–showcasing the personalities of Dag and Rab and their relationships with Nick and showing Nick as a leader/mentor. And also the beginning of his changes. Make sure they are each complete scenes, and then make sure they work together.

4. And then the tricky part.

I need to splice these two scene sequences together because they happen simultaneously in order to keep the sense of place and time simple. But if I do that, then the combined sequences also have to work as a whole (see the bit about annoying the reader above). So I also have to work in transitions from Button’s scene to the Nick/Dag scene, to the Nita scene, to Nick/Rab scene, to the Nita/Mort scene. I have to, somehow, make what’s happening in Nita’s scenes relevant to what’s happening in Nick’s scenes, and vice versa.

This is taking some thought. I can do it, I just have to think it through. And cut a lot of stuff. And write some new stuff. That’s about 8000 words I have to wrestle into shape. I’m on it.

Argh.

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So. The next chunk. It’s boring.That’s not exactly tr...

So. The next chunk. It’s boring.

That’s not exactly true, Nita almost gets killed, so that’s good, but there’s still too much chat. (I love dialogue.) And Nick’s stuff is deadly dull. The structure doesn’t help; it’s two scene sequences spliced together which insures that one of those sequences will be annoying because it’ll take people away from the one they liked. So here’s what I need to do:

1. Take the scenes out of the draft and separate them into Nita/Button PoV scenes in one file and Nick scenes in the other.

2. Read the Nita scenes as one scene (even though they switch PoVs; I’ll cut them apart again later) to make sure that while they each are scenes in and of themselves (protagonist, antagonist, goals, conflict, climax), they also work as a whole. Also make some key content changes that I realized I needed as I worked through the draft.

3. Take the Nick scenes apart completely and divide them into two conversations–Nick vs. Dag and then Nick vs. Rab–showcasing the personalities of Dag and Rab and their relationships with Nick and showing Nick as a leader/mentor. And also the beginning of his changes. Make sure they are each complete scenes, and then make sure they work together.

4. And then the tricky part.

I need to splice these two scene sequences together because they happen simultaneously in order to keep the sense of place and time simple. But if I do that, then the combined sequences also have to work as a whole (see the bit about annoying the reader above). So I also have to work in transitions from Button’s scene to the Nick/Dag scene, to the Nita scene, to Nick/Rab scene, to the Nita/Mort scene. I have to, somehow, make what’s happening in Nita’s scenes relevant to what’s happening in Nick’s scenes, and vice versa.

This is taking some thought. I can do it, I just have to think it through. And cut a lot of stuff. And write some new stuff. That’s about 8000 words I have to wrestle into shape. I’m on it.

Argh.

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The Color of Demons

Okay, before you read the rest of this post, what color are demons? Not in Nita’s book, in real life. When you think of demons, cartoon demons, movie demons, whatever, what color are they?

Decide before you read the rest of this.

So I googled for text answers and found out that demons come in different colors–really, don’t google “demons”–but mostly they’re red and yellow. (Yellow? Really?) Then I googled for demon images and found a lot of red, black and gray. When I googled for demon clip art, it was overwhelmingly red, with a few blue ones mixed in.

So did any of you reading this think, “Wait. Demons aren’t green . . .” I like it that it’s the wrong color because that’s a huge clue that whoever designed the amusement park knew demons were real because that person started the whole green make-up bit. (Reverse-engineering, it is my specialty.) Is this one of those thing where Mort says “Demons are green” and then later Dag and Rab are green, so you as a reader say, “Okay, in this world, demons are green”?

In other news, I spent some time on those next scene sequences and finally admitted to myself what I’d known all along but had been avoiding: Nick’s scenes suck. (That’s a technical term.) And Mort would be doing things differently in Nita’s scenes. So I’m tearing apart Nick’s scenes and going through Nita’s again. So no scenes today. Scenes tomorrow, demons today.

Also, I’m thinking of getting another tattoo. Oh, and carolc, I have not forgotten this:

“Wait. Soft and hard turning points? Why haven’t I heard of this before? Can we have a Questionable on the difference between soft and hard turning points?”

I just haven’t gotten to it. Short answer, that’s something I made up for my own work, not anything that’s official. But I can certainly talk about it. Once I get Nick’s scenes out of Suck.

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The Crusie Website: It Needs Work, Part One

My plan for today is to go out and get food and drink and then return and finish up the next chunk of Act One and get it up here for you all to take apart. But other things are going on and one of them is that I have to clear up the website because it’s been awhile.

So three questions:

The Home Page: Is the text there too geeky? Too obscure? Too annoying? Too anything? It’s the first place people land so it’s supposed to be welcoming and establish my personality, but you know how that goes. No, I will not put my picture up there. (If the link doesn’t work, it’s at http://jennycrusie.com .)

The Everything Else Tab: The last tab is Everything Else, the stuff that doesn’t fit Anywhere Else. I cleared a lot of stuff out there the last time I revised the site, so now it’s down to Collages, Crochet, Food, Music, and Titles. I’m thinking of putting an avatar page up just because I’ve had so many and that way I can say, “See? Pictures,” but I think that might just be annoying.

Another question: Mollie would like to put the pix on the collage and crochet page into galleries instead of embedding them in the text (the text would go into the galleries with the pictures). I hate galleries. Opinions?

And again, we thank you for your feedback, even if it is “Wow, this sucks.” You know, as long you tell us WHY it sucks.

I swear, once I get back from the grocery, I will get that rewrite done, and then I’ll put the next Act One post up, probably tomorrow. Honest.

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Cherry Saturday: 3-18-2017

Today is World Sleep Day. Get some.

We’ll wait:

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