On the edge, part two
Well, I did it. I tore apart the chapter I was talking about yesterday and put it back together again. And then - then I wrote the new ending for it. The one which brings the characters to the edge of escape, but fails to let one of them out. I finished it about 12:00, and spent the remaining half hour in my office shaking and crying. You can either view that as a sign the book is working, or a sign that I should up my meds. Up to you.
It's not even really that terrible a scene. It's just that characters being crazy-brave always nail me. Every single time, they nail me. Sad I can handle. But beauty and bravery break my heart.
So where are we now? Well, if I didn't seem to be allergic to structure, I'd say this was the "darkest moment" part of the draft. If it were a 100-page screenplay, so sayeth the Screenplay God Blake Snyder, this would be page 75. The break into act three.
I have some hope that act three will be faster to write. I've totally torn act one and two apart, saving only the main characters, the general premise, and a paragraph of description here and there. I have never had to strip a book so far back. It's not a rewrite, it's a just-plain write. But act three may be more or less salvageable. Wish me luck.
Also, an aside: mamculuna commented yesterday on my berating myself for listening to thinky-plotter me and thereby getting stuck. She says: "But I suspect that the thinky self gets you across the chasm on some kind of Rube Goldberg bridge, and then the real writer self sees where to go and flies across." That rang true. Maybe I can usefully view my thinky-plotter self as one of the poor souls working on the crazy bridge in Dr. Suess's How Lucky You Are. After all, you have to cross the gap somehow. Maybe you need a little crazy bridge labour before you can leap.
It's not even really that terrible a scene. It's just that characters being crazy-brave always nail me. Every single time, they nail me. Sad I can handle. But beauty and bravery break my heart.
So where are we now? Well, if I didn't seem to be allergic to structure, I'd say this was the "darkest moment" part of the draft. If it were a 100-page screenplay, so sayeth the Screenplay God Blake Snyder, this would be page 75. The break into act three.
I have some hope that act three will be faster to write. I've totally torn act one and two apart, saving only the main characters, the general premise, and a paragraph of description here and there. I have never had to strip a book so far back. It's not a rewrite, it's a just-plain write. But act three may be more or less salvageable. Wish me luck.
Also, an aside: mamculuna commented yesterday on my berating myself for listening to thinky-plotter me and thereby getting stuck. She says: "But I suspect that the thinky self gets you across the chasm on some kind of Rube Goldberg bridge, and then the real writer self sees where to go and flies across." That rang true. Maybe I can usefully view my thinky-plotter self as one of the poor souls working on the crazy bridge in Dr. Suess's How Lucky You Are. After all, you have to cross the gap somehow. Maybe you need a little crazy bridge labour before you can leap.