Saturday, part deux

[pbray]

Writing: 2,003 words today. A decent day that finished off a difficult chapter. Had lunch today with jpsorrow at one of my favorite hangouts, where I whined a bit about the difficulties I am having with the WiP. The action is spread between two rival countries, and is carried by two protagonists who share the weight of the storytelling between them. Yet given the distance that separates them, there is a natural communications lag. For example we're in chapter four when Lady Ysobel learns of the events that kicked off the opening scene of the book which was written in Josan's POV.

Argh. What was I thinking when I decided to structure the novel this way? I'm trying to avoid too much hopping back and forth, which at lunchtime we decided was like watching TV while someone else endlessly clicked the remote between two different movies. At the same time I don't want to go too far along in one character's world, only to have then have the second character now reacting to events that are ancient history for the first. Middle books of trilogies are always hard, and this one is living up to that reputation.

Grr. None of the problems are insurmountable. And I'm convinced that the end result will be a far more compelling story than if I'd chosen a more conventional approach. It's just the getting from here to there that's going to be an adventure.

Watching: Was channel surfing and came across the movie Stigmata. And as always happens when I see it, I was compelled to watch the rest of the movie. It's not just because I have a thing for Gabriel Byrne, though that doesn't hurt. There's something in this story line that draw me in, every time. Regardless of how many times I've seen it, which has to be at least a dozen times by now.

There are a handful of movies that have a similar effect on me. One of these days I'm going to have to sit down and analyze just what it is about them that I find so powerful.

Then, again, I might want to avoid that line of thought. Trying to decide what it was that I found compelling about Fox TV's John Doe series was the thread that launched me on my current series. Not sure I'm ready to launch another project until this book is firmly in hand.

Drinking: Boddington's ale, courtesy of the local watering hole where it was the draft beer of the week. Good stuff.

Comments

[larryhammer]

if I'd chosen a more conventional approach

I have to wonder: what's unconventional about it? Seriously.

---L.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Well conventional for me, in terms of what I've written before. The Regencies were all same time/same place stories, balanced between his & her viewpoints. And the Devlin series was carried by a strong single character, although I used other viewpoint characters they were generally co-locational with Devlin.

As a reader, I don't enjoy most books that try to hop between characters in different places each pursuing their own independent story lines that only cross on occasion. There are some books (generally in the middle or towards the end of a multi-volumed series) where I've skipped entire viewpoint characters out of lack of interest, and only read those sections that dealt with the characters I had come to care about.

Which makes it ironic that I've chosen to write in this format, though balancing two characters isn't the challenge of juggling four, five or more storylines.

It's the time delay that's a bitch, and I'd like to upgrade my fantasy to include an instantaneous communications device. A Morse telegraph would be helpful, or even a reliable chain of semaphore towers that stretched for several hundred miles across multiple kingdoms. Otherwise I'm going to have to cope with the "meanwhile, back at the ranch" factor.

Anyway, I'm not satisfied with how I started it, but I'm my own fiercest critic, and it's early days yet. Hopefully this will get easier as I go along, and I'll get feedback from my critique partner who will let me know if this is working, or if I need to shred the pages I've written and try again.

[larryhammer]

True, they do have to be equally interesting, but I often have fun with those sorts of stories. Especially when the author plays up and uses the communications lag as part of the story. It's got to be at least as frustrating to the characters -- and anything to bang on them is good.

---L.