Writing about writing
So I have been working on a story about Lady Christina, the one-off Who "companion" from 2009, for about two years now. (If it's any more than that, I don't want to know.)
I'll admit I haven't done so continually. I haven't done any writing for the past three months, and very little in 2013 so far.
But I really, really want to finish this story. I don't think I'm at the point of diminishing returns, don't think I'm committing the "our boys shall not have died in vain!" fallacy. I think it still could be written, and might even be readable.
But here's the problem. 98% of what I have leads up to the moment she got on that bus. I even know about the disaster that was her parents' brief marriage, and the more recent contretemps that led to the man she called "lover" being there to be thrown up against the car by police and handcuffed.
I also have some cute bits having to do with her trying to figure out what to do next after finally landing the bus she flew away in, and making a few calls.
I have thousands and thousands of words written. I have sketches of scenes, passages of dialog, paragraphs of summary and description.
But none of it is a coherent narrative. I haven't the faintest idea how to turn it into one. There's Christina, and there are a few other people: her lover, her parents, a professional actor she meets during a brief stretch of employment. But it all seems, in some way, to be a summary more than a story, and I don't know how to make it into one.
It's like it extends backward as far as I want to go - I even jotted down a few words about a collateral ancestor who wrote a famous account of the news of Waterloo reaching London - but it goes forward to about 9 hours after we see her flying off in the bus, and there it stops.
I do not know what to do. I feel like I've written down everything I *ought* to need. Some of it even seems, on re-reading, to be pretty good.
I've always had a holistic approach to writing characters. I get a "feel" for them and know what they'll say and what they think, what they like and what they won't talk about. Some people say things like, "Give them a problem to solve!" or "Have someone walk in holding a gun!" but ... that almost seems beside the point, if you know what I mean. I really don't believe that'll show us what they're made of. That wouldn't depict their flavor, their smell, their tone of voice.
(Had a flash of insight, there for a minute. With an OC you get to twist and turn the camera to show them in different ways. You can give them events of various degrees of drama or seriousness to show them off. But with Christina, we already have some set facts. She's wanted by the police and she's just escaped from a distant planet with the Doctor. Writing something about her that doesn't deal with those events in some way wouldn't be fanfiction, it'd be original fiction, and all that would be left of Doctor Who's Lady Christina would be her name.)
I don't know where Christina's story starts. I don't know how it ends. I only know the middle.
So there is my dilemma. If you have suggestions, ideas, comments, or just want to talk about it for a while, please comment.
I'll admit I haven't done so continually. I haven't done any writing for the past three months, and very little in 2013 so far.
But I really, really want to finish this story. I don't think I'm at the point of diminishing returns, don't think I'm committing the "our boys shall not have died in vain!" fallacy. I think it still could be written, and might even be readable.
But here's the problem. 98% of what I have leads up to the moment she got on that bus. I even know about the disaster that was her parents' brief marriage, and the more recent contretemps that led to the man she called "lover" being there to be thrown up against the car by police and handcuffed.
I also have some cute bits having to do with her trying to figure out what to do next after finally landing the bus she flew away in, and making a few calls.
I have thousands and thousands of words written. I have sketches of scenes, passages of dialog, paragraphs of summary and description.
But none of it is a coherent narrative. I haven't the faintest idea how to turn it into one. There's Christina, and there are a few other people: her lover, her parents, a professional actor she meets during a brief stretch of employment. But it all seems, in some way, to be a summary more than a story, and I don't know how to make it into one.
It's like it extends backward as far as I want to go - I even jotted down a few words about a collateral ancestor who wrote a famous account of the news of Waterloo reaching London - but it goes forward to about 9 hours after we see her flying off in the bus, and there it stops.
I do not know what to do. I feel like I've written down everything I *ought* to need. Some of it even seems, on re-reading, to be pretty good.
I've always had a holistic approach to writing characters. I get a "feel" for them and know what they'll say and what they think, what they like and what they won't talk about. Some people say things like, "Give them a problem to solve!" or "Have someone walk in holding a gun!" but ... that almost seems beside the point, if you know what I mean. I really don't believe that'll show us what they're made of. That wouldn't depict their flavor, their smell, their tone of voice.
(Had a flash of insight, there for a minute. With an OC you get to twist and turn the camera to show them in different ways. You can give them events of various degrees of drama or seriousness to show them off. But with Christina, we already have some set facts. She's wanted by the police and she's just escaped from a distant planet with the Doctor. Writing something about her that doesn't deal with those events in some way wouldn't be fanfiction, it'd be original fiction, and all that would be left of Doctor Who's Lady Christina would be her name.)
I don't know where Christina's story starts. I don't know how it ends. I only know the middle.
So there is my dilemma. If you have suggestions, ideas, comments, or just want to talk about it for a while, please comment.