Project Revision: Dissecting a Disaster
Note to my f-list: I am so very sorry for the horrific formatting that keeps removing the cuts. I have edited the entry FIVE TIMES now. LJ keeps moving my cut tags so that they don't actually cut anything. I know it's a mess. Please don't throw overripe vegetables at me. I did my best!
Author's ramble: Okay, guys. So. Here I have a piece that's actually small enough (in draft form) to put for my dissection (and yours). I'm not going to be giving away any secrets if I tell you up front that the chapter as it currently stands is pretty awful. There are some saving graces, however, so it's not such a complete wash that I'm going to just throw the whole thing away (yet). Below, some hesitant guesses at what works, what doesn't, and where I could really use some help - plus the draft, so you can see what the hell I'm talking about.
First of all, what (maybe) works:
Okay. Now for the chapter itself, let 'er rip!
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fan fiction.
it was dark and i was over
until you kissed my lips and you saved me
(from a song that gets too much radio play)
This is how it feels to be Ryn Orun, right now:
It hurts everywhere.
The pain rises up to meet you like it’s bleeding through your veins, and that would make sense, this pounding that takes over from inside your chest, maybe that’s why they call it heartache ...
You hear yourself laughing feebly at the small joke, and you know you’re mad with pain, giddy with it, losing your grip and tumbling helplessly into the dark ...
The dark opens its arms to greet you and you give yourself up to it like a lover, like it’s always been there, waiting, and you were meant for each other.
It’s a relief not to be fighting any more, and you just let go.
: : :
Ryn pushed herself up on hands and knees, still shaking all over, breathing raggedly. There was vomit on the floor; she had lost control of her stomach sometime before she blacked out. That had been happening more and more often lately; she wasn’t even sure how much of her physical distress was caused by the Temple treatments and how much belonged solely to the pain of Anakin’s violent rejection.
Overreacting, she told herself, dragging her aching limbs into a sitting position against the wall. You’re overreacting. But while that might be true, it didn’t help how she felt, and right now she felt too much; she wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t strong enough to feel everything, all at once ...
Ryn wasn’t fool enough to believe that feelings were ephemeral things, separable from the rest of one’s being, that could be enjoyed or discarded at will. The Jedi were wrong about this, she was sure of it; pain, all pain, was a sign of injury. It could be survived, it could be overcome, it could even (sometimes) be healed; but it could not be cut off and left behind, the insignificant flotsam of one’s passage through the galaxy. The Jedi forgot this: they said luminous beings are we and then acted as if physical pains were the only kind that had reality, and only psychic joys had any truth. They failed to understand the wholeness of Being, of lived reality in time and space. They separated themselves from themselves, mind from body - but to live in the world was to join the two in one, and the state in which they became truly separated was what other beings called Death …
The words were threading themselves together in her mind, strands of philosophy from her childhood she had never really understood, rewoven now in the silence, wrapping themselves around her aching bones, sinking into and out of her spirit, flicking in the spark that held her to life.
She sat shivering on the floor of a cold Temple corridor, lost in the darkness, and let herself fall apart.
: : :
Obi-Wan knew the part of the Temple where Ryn’s quarters were listed, but he hadn’t been there in years. This was a place with walls steeped in failure and shame and the fear of uncertainty, a place where dreams came to die.
Less poetically, it was where Agri-Corps workers on home leave and the Younglings receiving some final training before joining them ate and slept, in the Temple and not of it, present but not belonging. It was, Obi-Wan could not help thinking, the perfect place to find Ryn.
She wasn’t there.
He knocked on her door, called her name, focused the Force to find signs of life, all to no avail. He was lifting his hand to knock again when a door to his right slid open, and a half-dressed woman just approaching middle age leaned out.
“What’s all the noise?”
Obi-Wan turned and gave her his best smile. “I’m sorry to disturb your rest,” he said genially. “I’m looking for the girl who lives here. Ryn Orun?”
“Don’e look like she wants to be found,” the woman remarked. She looked him over with a critical eye. “What d’you want with her, anyway?”
“To talk,” said Obi-Wan.
“Huh. Awful late in the evening for conversation.”
What the ... oh. In spite of the woman’s glowering stare, Obi-Wan found himself grinning in amusement. He stepped over and held out a hand. “My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I promise I really do just want to talk,” he said firmly. “Are you a friend of Ryn’s?”
The woman stared at him suspiciously a moment longer, then took the hand. “Name’s Mathilde,” she said brusquely. “And I don’t know the little git. But I do know she’s too young to be let on her own.”
“She might surprise you,” Obi-Wan said. “But I’m glad she’s got somebody looking out for her. Any idea where she is now?”
“How should I know?” Mathilde asked, hitching her robe irritably. “Told you I don’t know her, di’n’ I?” She flapped a hand down the corridor, that same robe flapping garishly, its bright colors catching the light. It was certainly not Temple issue, but enforcement of the Code ran much looser in the Agri-Corps, a sort of compensation prize for the potential its members had never lived up to. “But you can’t hang around here all night. Looks like to me you’re bang out of luck.”
Obi-Wan gave her another smile, hanging on to his patience. “And so I am. If you see Ryn, do please tell her Master Kenobi stopped by.”
“Won’t see her,” Mathilde grunted. “Keeps to herself, that’s what.” She raked another disparaging glance over him, from head to toe. “Can’t blame her.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. “Good evening to you,” he said anyway, and left.
: : :
This entry was originally posted at http://wyncatastrophe.dreamwidth.org/113695.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Author's ramble: Okay, guys. So. Here I have a piece that's actually small enough (in draft form) to put for my dissection (and yours). I'm not going to be giving away any secrets if I tell you up front that the chapter as it currently stands is pretty awful. There are some saving graces, however, so it's not such a complete wash that I'm going to just throw the whole thing away (yet). Below, some hesitant guesses at what works, what doesn't, and where I could really use some help - plus the draft, so you can see what the hell I'm talking about.
First of all, what (maybe) works:
- The Stover homage at the beginning of the chapter. Stover used those scenes (you'll see) to great effect in the ROTS novelization, of course, and fans of that canonical text are likely to enjoy seeing the same technique deployed in a fan text. Probably won't work as well on readers who aren't fans of the ROTS novelization, but I'm not worried about that since probably only Anakin fans will be reading this story anyway, and most of them (I think) have read the novelization; it was a hit with that demographic. Stylistically, I like how it sets up the oncoming action without giving away too much of Ryn's mental state; descriptions of psychic trauma in any kind of fiction tend to navigate somewhere between two extremes, which I like to call James Joyce and Bad Romance: the first is so "inside the mind" or experiential that the audience can't make heads or tails out of it, and nobody knows what's going on, while the second offers blatant and not very emotive explanations of what's happening, i.e., "She felt as if her heart were break. Tears started in her eyes, and she felt sad." Romances and some mysteries do this a lot, and it works well in oral storytelling contexts because it gets the point across quickly and unambiguously; and in the case of oral narratives, hell, you can always embroider with something more evocative after the fact. Either approach has its adherents, of course; it's an easy guess that I like Joyce better, but that's a matter of preference. Some readers would rather just get the message straight, and that's fine. My challenge here is to avoid plunging too far into the miasma of Ryn's feelings, both because it looks messy on the page and because, OH MY GOD, the teenage angst, it burns. But I had fun playing with the Stover tribute, and I think it's one of my better efforts from a strictly language-oriented point of view; predictably, I am at my best when imitating others. Original, I ain't.
- Introducing Ryn's loose association with the Agri-Corps waaaay earlier than we did in the first version of Freefall (where it won't show up until after Warlord) and simultaneously not putting her room in a closet, dear Lord what was I thinking?
- Obi-Wan in investigative mode. This feels right for his character, but there was an earlier version in which, after Anakin storms off after being ordered to his room in the previous installment, he reaches out to Ryn to find the answers Obi-Wan isn't giving him, and consequently he finds her first. That makes a lot of sense for their mutual arc, but doesn't help as much with the moving-toward-investigation theme that's going to keep them all interacting and growing friendlier until the cliffhanger that y'all already know about if you've read the first version.
- The straight narrative scene with Ryn (as opposed to the Stover homage). I worry that it's too maudlin, but I have to pack in teenage angst and dissident philosophy and some dark hints about her upbringing really fast; I worry that the infrastructure of that scene, just sitting and drowning in her own misery, isn't really strong enough to carry the load I'm wanting to bear. Possible apposition here: I could insert a brief scene from Anakin's POV as he not only sense her distress, but catches glimpses, through the Force, of how we got into this mess in the first place: probably a couple of quick vignettes from Ryn's childhood, scene through his eyes. That feels a little TV-episode tropey, but on the other hand, it could pull double-duty, providing deliciously vague exposition about Ryn's background while simultaneously breaking through Anakin's snit to reach his better nature.
Okay. Now for the chapter itself, let 'er rip!
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fan fiction.
it was dark and i was over
until you kissed my lips and you saved me
(from a song that gets too much radio play)
This is how it feels to be Ryn Orun, right now:
It hurts everywhere.
The pain rises up to meet you like it’s bleeding through your veins, and that would make sense, this pounding that takes over from inside your chest, maybe that’s why they call it heartache ...
You hear yourself laughing feebly at the small joke, and you know you’re mad with pain, giddy with it, losing your grip and tumbling helplessly into the dark ...
The dark opens its arms to greet you and you give yourself up to it like a lover, like it’s always been there, waiting, and you were meant for each other.
It’s a relief not to be fighting any more, and you just let go.
: : :
Ryn pushed herself up on hands and knees, still shaking all over, breathing raggedly. There was vomit on the floor; she had lost control of her stomach sometime before she blacked out. That had been happening more and more often lately; she wasn’t even sure how much of her physical distress was caused by the Temple treatments and how much belonged solely to the pain of Anakin’s violent rejection.
Overreacting, she told herself, dragging her aching limbs into a sitting position against the wall. You’re overreacting. But while that might be true, it didn’t help how she felt, and right now she felt too much; she wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t strong enough to feel everything, all at once ...
Ryn wasn’t fool enough to believe that feelings were ephemeral things, separable from the rest of one’s being, that could be enjoyed or discarded at will. The Jedi were wrong about this, she was sure of it; pain, all pain, was a sign of injury. It could be survived, it could be overcome, it could even (sometimes) be healed; but it could not be cut off and left behind, the insignificant flotsam of one’s passage through the galaxy. The Jedi forgot this: they said luminous beings are we and then acted as if physical pains were the only kind that had reality, and only psychic joys had any truth. They failed to understand the wholeness of Being, of lived reality in time and space. They separated themselves from themselves, mind from body - but to live in the world was to join the two in one, and the state in which they became truly separated was what other beings called Death …
The words were threading themselves together in her mind, strands of philosophy from her childhood she had never really understood, rewoven now in the silence, wrapping themselves around her aching bones, sinking into and out of her spirit, flicking in the spark that held her to life.
She sat shivering on the floor of a cold Temple corridor, lost in the darkness, and let herself fall apart.
: : :
Obi-Wan knew the part of the Temple where Ryn’s quarters were listed, but he hadn’t been there in years. This was a place with walls steeped in failure and shame and the fear of uncertainty, a place where dreams came to die.
Less poetically, it was where Agri-Corps workers on home leave and the Younglings receiving some final training before joining them ate and slept, in the Temple and not of it, present but not belonging. It was, Obi-Wan could not help thinking, the perfect place to find Ryn.
She wasn’t there.
He knocked on her door, called her name, focused the Force to find signs of life, all to no avail. He was lifting his hand to knock again when a door to his right slid open, and a half-dressed woman just approaching middle age leaned out.
“What’s all the noise?”
Obi-Wan turned and gave her his best smile. “I’m sorry to disturb your rest,” he said genially. “I’m looking for the girl who lives here. Ryn Orun?”
“Don’e look like she wants to be found,” the woman remarked. She looked him over with a critical eye. “What d’you want with her, anyway?”
“To talk,” said Obi-Wan.
“Huh. Awful late in the evening for conversation.”
What the ... oh. In spite of the woman’s glowering stare, Obi-Wan found himself grinning in amusement. He stepped over and held out a hand. “My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I promise I really do just want to talk,” he said firmly. “Are you a friend of Ryn’s?”
The woman stared at him suspiciously a moment longer, then took the hand. “Name’s Mathilde,” she said brusquely. “And I don’t know the little git. But I do know she’s too young to be let on her own.”
“She might surprise you,” Obi-Wan said. “But I’m glad she’s got somebody looking out for her. Any idea where she is now?”
“How should I know?” Mathilde asked, hitching her robe irritably. “Told you I don’t know her, di’n’ I?” She flapped a hand down the corridor, that same robe flapping garishly, its bright colors catching the light. It was certainly not Temple issue, but enforcement of the Code ran much looser in the Agri-Corps, a sort of compensation prize for the potential its members had never lived up to. “But you can’t hang around here all night. Looks like to me you’re bang out of luck.”
Obi-Wan gave her another smile, hanging on to his patience. “And so I am. If you see Ryn, do please tell her Master Kenobi stopped by.”
“Won’t see her,” Mathilde grunted. “Keeps to herself, that’s what.” She raked another disparaging glance over him, from head to toe. “Can’t blame her.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. “Good evening to you,” he said anyway, and left.
: : :
This entry was originally posted at http://wyncatastrophe.dreamwidth.org/113695.html. Please comment there using OpenID.