All the running you can do ...
At New Years, I was working on chapter 16 in the novel. Six weeks later, I'm finally up to ... chapter 16. The good news is, it's a different chapter 16. Chapters 14 and 15 are both new, and chapters 5 and 6 have expanded - now with heirloom tomatoes!
It feels as though now that I have a framework I can see connections and character movements so obvious I don't know how I've made it this far without them. And I keep running into places where I can't go forward without first going back. Hamlet and Laertes can't have the great big sword fight until they've made it really clear that they hate each other's guts. Or whatever you want to call that tangle of fury and adolescent desperation and grief over Ophelia. And whatever it is, it has to be blaring enough that they're ready to skewer each other right now on this hot, headachey afternoon and smear sticky poison on the blades first.
But once you have that in place, Hamlet and Ophelia can also take a walk in act one and go skinny dipping on the backside of the moat and end up smelling of wild rosemary. They can laugh in each other's arms about the nights when they used to sneak away from their parents on Hamlet's school holidays to drink illiciet 40s in a disused tower that smells of generations of pigeons and start bonfires that nearly set the stones on fire. And on the night his father dies, she can hold him when he's too raw to cry.
It's amazing how many things you can fit into one book. Even before the fan writers get a hold of it. :-)
It feels as though now that I have a framework I can see connections and character movements so obvious I don't know how I've made it this far without them. And I keep running into places where I can't go forward without first going back. Hamlet and Laertes can't have the great big sword fight until they've made it really clear that they hate each other's guts. Or whatever you want to call that tangle of fury and adolescent desperation and grief over Ophelia. And whatever it is, it has to be blaring enough that they're ready to skewer each other right now on this hot, headachey afternoon and smear sticky poison on the blades first.
But once you have that in place, Hamlet and Ophelia can also take a walk in act one and go skinny dipping on the backside of the moat and end up smelling of wild rosemary. They can laugh in each other's arms about the nights when they used to sneak away from their parents on Hamlet's school holidays to drink illiciet 40s in a disused tower that smells of generations of pigeons and start bonfires that nearly set the stones on fire. And on the night his father dies, she can hold him when he's too raw to cry.
It's amazing how many things you can fit into one book. Even before the fan writers get a hold of it. :-)