Writer Brain Re-engaging?
I've come up with two new novel ideas in the past few days. Saturday, full of pierogi and sunburn, I got an idea for the early Department novel I've been wanting to write, with one of the tertiary characters from Highway of Mirrors. It's maybe not the most stunningly original plot-line ever, but it will allow me to do lots of stuff with the early formation of the Department and bring in lots of backstory on this character, which is what the book's actually about; the plot is just to hang all that on. ;-) Then a couple days ago, a song that I've been listening to rather a lot, thinking there's a story in there somewhere, suddenly clicked, and a whole new scenario+plot grabbed my neurons. It's a sort-of fairytale retelling, except it's several fairy tales thrown into a blender and by the time I'm done messing about with the results, I doubt the sources will be recognizable beyond a couple of scenes. And it's still trying to take over my brain, most reluctant to wait its turn.
Meanwhile, I feel like I'm getting some traction on Falling From Ground again. Frustrated with not being able to keep the flow of the chapters-so-far in my head, I sat down and did a paragraph-by-paragraph outline of what I'd written. It's incredibly tedious, but if anything'll get the details of a piece into one's head, that will. And it made clear that the reason the text felt like an incoherent mess was that it was flopping from one thing to another and back again; my character established that he had to know X to be able to figure out Y and Z, then proceeded to spend pages speculation about Y and Z without yet knowing X. Luckily, once the problem was identified and pinned down, it was easy to fix; I moved a chunk, tweaked a couple of sentences, and voila, relatively coherent flow. I also finally yielded and tried the post-it note method for organizing what happens next in what order and what needs to go along with it. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, but somehow it made it all seem much more logical and coherent. So I'm still doing the same thing I planned on, but I feel a lot better about it now. ;-) I think the story is more focused now, both on paper and in my head, and that's something it badly needed.
I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying all this. There's still plenty of work to do, and I'm still at the stage of cutting up salvage text and stitching it in where it'll be more use. (I've got a great scene of my character being followed that no longer makes any sense whatsoever in the early part of the book; I'll have to see if I can fit it in later.) I'm beginning to want a dedicated writing space just so I can pin things to the walls, though I suspect that wouldn't work out well long term.
This entry was originally posted at http://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/141980.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.
Meanwhile, I feel like I'm getting some traction on Falling From Ground again. Frustrated with not being able to keep the flow of the chapters-so-far in my head, I sat down and did a paragraph-by-paragraph outline of what I'd written. It's incredibly tedious, but if anything'll get the details of a piece into one's head, that will. And it made clear that the reason the text felt like an incoherent mess was that it was flopping from one thing to another and back again; my character established that he had to know X to be able to figure out Y and Z, then proceeded to spend pages speculation about Y and Z without yet knowing X. Luckily, once the problem was identified and pinned down, it was easy to fix; I moved a chunk, tweaked a couple of sentences, and voila, relatively coherent flow. I also finally yielded and tried the post-it note method for organizing what happens next in what order and what needs to go along with it. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, but somehow it made it all seem much more logical and coherent. So I'm still doing the same thing I planned on, but I feel a lot better about it now. ;-) I think the story is more focused now, both on paper and in my head, and that's something it badly needed.
I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying all this. There's still plenty of work to do, and I'm still at the stage of cutting up salvage text and stitching it in where it'll be more use. (I've got a great scene of my character being followed that no longer makes any sense whatsoever in the early part of the book; I'll have to see if I can fit it in later.) I'm beginning to want a dedicated writing space just so I can pin things to the walls, though I suspect that wouldn't work out well long term.
This entry was originally posted at http://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/141980.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.