Amy Butcher's Blog, page 2

Plotting along

This is the hardest part for me: plot.

In my first novel, I basically had one plot line throughout. A murder mystery to be solved by one primary character. Everything fed into that journey. In this one, I upped the ante. I have a murder mystery, a character who will solve it but only because she’s trying to figure out financial shenanigans that (maybe) led to the murder, a subplot of romance and eroticism, a subplot of dogs and queer culture, a subplot of feminism and power. I think this may be a bit too much.

So far, I feel like I’ve been laying down bricks. Not perfect bricks, but pretty functional, squarish, dense things. The problem is that the wall I’m building doesn’t seem to be getting any higher. Maybe it’s because my wall (my plot) is far too wide.

One helpful suggestion the NaNoWriMo folks have made for situations like this is to just jump ahead. Write a scene where the character has already resolved their father issues and jumped into bed with a new hunky guy. Write a scene where the character has solved the riddle of the complicated financial transaction and stands, printouts in hand, saying “Eureka!”. Write the scene where she kicks some serious feminist butt.

Cobble together something that looks like a roof and walls, that looks like the whole of a house, even if you have to go back and fill in bricks later.

This is better than a low, wide wall that separates nothing from nothing.

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Depth of Field

My eyes have begun to focus at 24″ and nothing else.

I talk to a friend on Skype and realized that this real, delicious, living, breathing form of a person I’m conversing with has been flattened onto a screen. She appears three dimensional but this is an illusion my mind has created, drawing on past experience, in order to make sense of a world that is 24″ away. Only 24″ away, nothing more, nothing less.

So too my novel is an illusion of a world that exists 24″ away. Because we novelists steal often and without shame from the world around us, there is an odd way in which the real world gets flattened onto the page, made into a 24″ away reality. But there is the converse as well, where the illusionary world gets tired of being laid flat on the page and springs forth, finding expression in the real world. While it certainly provides rest for they eyes, it is disturbing to a mind that is trying to keep some semblance of “reality” during this process.

Perhaps I should just let it go, let my eyes relax like into a sterogram, and let the magic pop. Be it real or illusion, who cares at this point.

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