Novels, and other instruments of slow methodical torture

[slipjig3]

I've finally blown the dust off of The Noise of Endless Wars, the NaNoWriMo beastie that refuses to die. At work, I whipped off a vague outline of the next several chapters, just barely enough to provide a hazy framework to go by. It's so vague that I have items like, "Scene w/ phone call from Mom," without having the slightest clue what the phone call's about or why. The important thing, though, is that the story's moving forward. We're back to pulling teeth here, but I've squeezed a couple of pages out here and there. Things on my mind:

1) It's almost certainly going to be Volume One of a tetralogy. The story has wanted to be a four-parter since way back in the concept stage, but I've fought it because I didn't see how I could possibly make parts two through four anything but anticlimactic. Somewhere in my NyQuil-induced haze, however, I caught a glimpse of how it all might work, although I still have some issues I need to thrash out in my head, preferably with something exceptionally thrashy.

2) In the same Antihista-brain state (I need to develop viral infections more often!), I saw a way to not only tie up more than one loose plot thread, but to give the whole enterprise a bit more urgency and drive the story into Volume Two and beyond. Not sure if it'll work yet, but damn the torpedoes and all that.

3) The question I hate having to ask myself: Who do I have the nerve to kill off? Ignoring Tala the protagonist/narrator, I have one definitely-gonna-live, one definitely-gonna-die, and... *counts on fingers* at least five candidates for a Big Icky Death Scene. rafaela has made her own suggestion, and it's someone who's definitely on the short list, but...but I don't know if I'm quite that much of a ruthless bastard, because it's the one person who, if there's any shred of justice in the universe, should not meet the kind of end that appears to be on its ugly way. *sigh* I hate playing God.

Anyway, please forgive me for my vague writer-prattling, as always, wish me luck. Back into the soup with me....

Comments

Plotting

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

Mike Judge once joked (ca. 1995) about outlining a Beavis and Butt-Head movie thusly: "Act I: Beavis and Butt-Head, like, do stuff; Act II: there's a conflict and something sucks; Act III: the conflict is, like, resolved!"

Back into the soup with me....

Swimming in soup. THAT could clear up your sinuses!

[theloriest.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, I used to write these really bad fantasy stories. And in one of my favorites, I think nearly every character was killed in some way or another. The hero died by falling into a pit full of spikes and dying a slow painful death.

I wrote this for my fifth grade teacher. He was the first to tease me and call me a bloodthirsty little savage. I have lived up to that with nearly everything I've written ever since, though perhaps not as drastically as that one particular story.