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One after-effect of Arisia is that I'm trying to revive Ordinary Talismans from its coma. (Allow me to thank ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
issendai for this one.) The first step, since the original is trapped on Ye Olde Dead iMac of Extreme Deadnesse, is to type all 30-or-so pages from the one existing hard copy, along with all of the red ink said copy has managed to accumulate in the past year and the two handwritten pages I cranked out before temporarily abandoning the thing. This will take some time, which is a good thing, since it'll allow me to stall while I figure out what the expletive-deleted I'm doing.
(Forgive me if the following discussion is boring, but I'm trying to think out loud on this.)
Some of the challenges are as follows:
1) I wrote some scenes out of order. Now I have to link them up. They probably link up about as well as a line of greased otters attempting a Red Rover barricade. This is a problem.
2) There is a scene that I can visualize better than almost anything else in the story, but I'm not so sure of how necessary it is to the novel, or, if it's not necessary, how well it works as evocative character development. (This one I may ponder more directly in this forum later.)
3) I have a character whom I don't have a good lock on just yet. Who is this guy?
4) The ending. Hoo boy, the ending. For the first time, I actually know how the thing is supposed to end; the problem is, it is going to be very difficult to write. In particular, the most important non-narrator character does something (a few things, actually, but one doozy) that by all rights should be completely unacceptable according to her world view, but somehow makes perfect sense to her under the immediate circumstances of that moment in time. I can see how it fits into place, but I'm not at all sure of how to communicate that information. This is the one that's going to send me running for the naproxin.
5) My, Adam, that's a fuzzy denouement you have there....
So, yeah. No, I'm not looking for answers from y'all just yet (first things first), but I did want to post something in the interest of moving forward. We'll see how this goes.
issendai for this one.) The first step, since the original is trapped on Ye Olde Dead iMac of Extreme Deadnesse, is to type all 30-or-so pages from the one existing hard copy, along with all of the red ink said copy has managed to accumulate in the past year and the two handwritten pages I cranked out before temporarily abandoning the thing. This will take some time, which is a good thing, since it'll allow me to stall while I figure out what the expletive-deleted I'm doing.(Forgive me if the following discussion is boring, but I'm trying to think out loud on this.)
Some of the challenges are as follows:
1) I wrote some scenes out of order. Now I have to link them up. They probably link up about as well as a line of greased otters attempting a Red Rover barricade. This is a problem.
2) There is a scene that I can visualize better than almost anything else in the story, but I'm not so sure of how necessary it is to the novel, or, if it's not necessary, how well it works as evocative character development. (This one I may ponder more directly in this forum later.)
3) I have a character whom I don't have a good lock on just yet. Who is this guy?
4) The ending. Hoo boy, the ending. For the first time, I actually know how the thing is supposed to end; the problem is, it is going to be very difficult to write. In particular, the most important non-narrator character does something (a few things, actually, but one doozy) that by all rights should be completely unacceptable according to her world view, but somehow makes perfect sense to her under the immediate circumstances of that moment in time. I can see how it fits into place, but I'm not at all sure of how to communicate that information. This is the one that's going to send me running for the naproxin.
5) My, Adam, that's a fuzzy denouement you have there....
So, yeah. No, I'm not looking for answers from y'all just yet (first things first), but I did want to post something in the interest of moving forward. We'll see how this goes.
