(no subject)
Where the hell does time go? I have a little over a week left in the flat- room- I'm living in at the moment. I won't miss it much. My internet connection is wire-reliant and intermittent, and my TV connection has failed since there was a storm up here a couple of weeks ago; I suspect the aerial on the roof was damaged. Two of the three other people in the flat purposefully wait until I'm back in my room before they venture out, hurry away if I come out again to talk to them, and don't clean up after themselves. The buses past our block have been diverted again due to the Paralympic shooting venue up the road. At the start of the summer I was happy here but now, after several months without anything constructive to do, with no money left and most of my friends outside of the city or miles away on the other side of it, I feel isolated.
I'll be back in Worthing for a week, before moving into the house me and nenimefish are taking with Susan and Sophie from my university. Before that, we really need to get a date to sign the tenancy form and pay what we need to pay. I've emailed them asking to do it this Saturday or next week after 6. We might have to do it in two waves, I don't know. I'm just so ready to move.
Meanwhile, I've decided- again- that I want to finish my full-length novel project this academic year. It sounds ill-advised to add that on top of four academic courses, but I find it harder to work on my own stuff when there's no pre-laid structure to my day to start me off.
It's already undergone one massive plot overhaul, and I feel like another is due. At the moment, I just feel like the protagonist drifts too much. I feel like chance things happen to him, he soliloquizes a lot, and then some more chance things happen, he stumbles across the climax, and things are semi-resolved without any proactive message coming through.
In essence, the plot runs that a middle-aged character who has never really managed to put down any roots or maintain any passions other than his punishing police job returns from London to his sleepy childhood village home to care for his mother as his father slowly dies. While being manipulated by his passive-agressive family and forced to make caring arrangements for the father who used to beat the shit out of him, his instinct for justice against the man stifled by time, shame and social pressure, the main character starts a relationship with an older woman who has also never 'settled down' but is much more well-adjusted than him. His internal struggle is how- and whether- to build a relationship in such an emotionally unsafe time and place, and how to cope with the family affairs he's been avoiding for twenty-odd years. Parallel to this, a murderer starts victimising a respected 'shiny on the outside' local family, and the situation gets beyond the capabilities of the local odds-and-sods police outfit. In the end, the main character's chasing of the case gets him violently involved, and the intimacy of violence clues him in to the identity and motivation of the killer.
Which sounds great on paper, but it crumbles. So the murderer's story parallels that of the main character. What's the message? Some people go vigilante, some don't? That's nothing groundbreaking. One path is happier than others? Not really; both the protag and antag are damaged and unhappy. What closure does the main character get when his father finally dies? None. The protag already knows the 'lesson' learned at the end (don't do murder even if you really hate someone, it's bad). The rest of his family are still who they are; also damaged, also uncommunicative. In a short time (6 months tops) the love interest has gone from never having met this guy to having been confronted with a murder scene, hospitalisation of an assaulted boyfriend, and a history of child abuse- how's she supposed to deal with that? Is that supposed to make her want to stay with this guy forever? Because I don't think it would. Where is the main character supposed to go with any of this in the conclusion? Nothing is neatly tied up except that the murders have been solved. None of the internal conflict has been laid to rest; the inciting situational need- to care for his emotionally damaged mother who will not acknowledge the abuse happened- is still exactly the same as it was at the start. Is the audience satisfied if he says fuck you to the village and strikes back out on his own, maybe with the love interest? No, not really- it's still not resolving anything... he's just continuing to run away.
I have these great characters I really like, but no satisfying plot whatsoever.
I'll be back in Worthing for a week, before moving into the house me and nenimefish are taking with Susan and Sophie from my university. Before that, we really need to get a date to sign the tenancy form and pay what we need to pay. I've emailed them asking to do it this Saturday or next week after 6. We might have to do it in two waves, I don't know. I'm just so ready to move.
Meanwhile, I've decided- again- that I want to finish my full-length novel project this academic year. It sounds ill-advised to add that on top of four academic courses, but I find it harder to work on my own stuff when there's no pre-laid structure to my day to start me off.
It's already undergone one massive plot overhaul, and I feel like another is due. At the moment, I just feel like the protagonist drifts too much. I feel like chance things happen to him, he soliloquizes a lot, and then some more chance things happen, he stumbles across the climax, and things are semi-resolved without any proactive message coming through.
In essence, the plot runs that a middle-aged character who has never really managed to put down any roots or maintain any passions other than his punishing police job returns from London to his sleepy childhood village home to care for his mother as his father slowly dies. While being manipulated by his passive-agressive family and forced to make caring arrangements for the father who used to beat the shit out of him, his instinct for justice against the man stifled by time, shame and social pressure, the main character starts a relationship with an older woman who has also never 'settled down' but is much more well-adjusted than him. His internal struggle is how- and whether- to build a relationship in such an emotionally unsafe time and place, and how to cope with the family affairs he's been avoiding for twenty-odd years. Parallel to this, a murderer starts victimising a respected 'shiny on the outside' local family, and the situation gets beyond the capabilities of the local odds-and-sods police outfit. In the end, the main character's chasing of the case gets him violently involved, and the intimacy of violence clues him in to the identity and motivation of the killer.
Which sounds great on paper, but it crumbles. So the murderer's story parallels that of the main character. What's the message? Some people go vigilante, some don't? That's nothing groundbreaking. One path is happier than others? Not really; both the protag and antag are damaged and unhappy. What closure does the main character get when his father finally dies? None. The protag already knows the 'lesson' learned at the end (don't do murder even if you really hate someone, it's bad). The rest of his family are still who they are; also damaged, also uncommunicative. In a short time (6 months tops) the love interest has gone from never having met this guy to having been confronted with a murder scene, hospitalisation of an assaulted boyfriend, and a history of child abuse- how's she supposed to deal with that? Is that supposed to make her want to stay with this guy forever? Because I don't think it would. Where is the main character supposed to go with any of this in the conclusion? Nothing is neatly tied up except that the murders have been solved. None of the internal conflict has been laid to rest; the inciting situational need- to care for his emotionally damaged mother who will not acknowledge the abuse happened- is still exactly the same as it was at the start. Is the audience satisfied if he says fuck you to the village and strikes back out on his own, maybe with the love interest? No, not really- it's still not resolving anything... he's just continuing to run away.
I have these great characters I really like, but no satisfying plot whatsoever.