Snakes and Ladders

Authorial Intrusion

There's a term in the Turkey City Lexicon called Dischism, which boils down to authorial intrusions in the story. The author imposes their surroundings and mental state on the character. Or to quote from Turkey City:

Authors who smoke or drink while writing often drown or choke their characters with an endless supply of booze and cigs. In subtler forms of the Dischism, the characters complain of their confusion and indecision -- when this is actually the author's condition at the moment of writing, not theirs within the story.

This comes into play regarding this morning's work on Stag. I hit my snooze button about four times before finally getting up. (My snooze clocks in at five minutes, which is actually pretty annoying, but good if you ARE trying to get up.) Needless to say, I was sticky-eyed and sluggish, and rather resentful of morning intruding on my slumbers. So I wrote a scene, unplanned, where Elriah gets chewed out by Fleder and Caspia for lying abed too long and not showing up on time to her lessons. (But I can tie this too her newly wiggly dreamstates, so it actually fits in the story. She's got to start making her first prophecies soon.)

This all comes on the heels of three days of rather limited writing and me not getting up in time to make a full effort at writing. Despite my four snoozes, I had time today to wiggle in 500+ words, but if this scene makes it past future revisions, you can read Fleder's lecture as being a lecture to myself, as much to Elriah. Kinda fun to write in a weird way.

Writing

I wrote yesterday morning, but not this morning. I went to bed early with a pounding headache last night, and when I woke up this morning, I just ached all over. Had a nice warm shower, but failed to get any writing done. Which is too bad because I kept running pissed off Elriah conversations in my head. Well, maybe they'll have marinated by tonight.

Update

Oh, yes, let me assure you that I did indeed write today. Whee. BEFORE I played Viva Pinata or ranted about the Foobiverse even.

- wrote Elriah's father warning her against Fleder's apostasy
- wrote Elriah being all pissed at the stag (this is later in the outline than my body of writing currently is, but hey, the muse comes where it will....)

My current process is:

- Try to outline with greater granularity about six or seven small scenes
- Figure out how they fit together, what the causality is...
- Write them...
- Leave notes scattered chronologically throughout as they occur to me
- Stitch together scenes
- Erase notes.

BUT...it occured to me. The notes are handy. The notes actually keep track of why a scene is important or what things in it lead to other scenes. I'm thinking of starting a note file of some kind that will keep track of these things, so when I do revisions later.

Anyone have any suggestions for how they track this sort of thing. It's the first time I've done this, this way...but I like it. It means the scenes have more grounding. I'm getting stuck less and less....less fiddling and going, "What am I doing here?" Because....well, the notes remind me.

PS. Decided I am not keen on title again. It belongs more appropriately to the second half of the story. Am just gonna refer to the whole damn mess as "Stag" from now on.

PSS. This is really funny. My friend Lise just had a big ol' productive spurt....right before she found out I'd gone on retreat. She calls it being "joined at the muse."

Foobery

What I REALLY think about today's FBoFW strip:

For Worse or For Worse

Shaenon Garrity's screed on the suckitudinous of Anthony.

Early Morning Writing

I think it's becoming more and more obvious that given my current schedule, I am best at early morning writing, when all the brain cells can be devoted to it. Alas. I used to be such a night owl...where did that go to?

Rolled out of bed this morning and wrote a bit....an Elriah and Melantha scene.

On the other hand, not posting a sentence or a snippet, because nothing's really jumping out out me this morning. Is that a bad sign? The scene doesn't bore me, but there's nothing particularly punchy or witty going on....hrm. Maybe it's one of those things that gets cut later. Oh, well, forging on...story out, THEN the rewrites. This has always been my bane in the past...the constant polishing and repolishing before the story has revealed itself.  I'll have the prettiest polished story bricks nobody will ever see...and no story to build them around.

No, we forge on.

908 Words

Today I wrote Elriah's dad and her potential tutor having the conversation about her education. If that sounds too boring, let me assure that it was full of verbal fencing about hypocrisy and belief. Fleder's an atheist, or as much as you can be in a fantasy world, where everyone attributes their magical powers to their god. And Elriah's dad is a High Priest....apparently he once considered Fleder as a candidate for the priesthood but noticed he has this interesting habit of shying away from certain theological questions. This is interesting to Lyhael because Fleder is so relentlessly blunt and honest about everything else.

I liked the scene because it showed some stuff about Fleder's past...and for the first time, Lyhael emerges from the vague fog he seems to live in, and shows at least where half of Elriah sharp cookie-ness comes from. Problem with trying to write Lyhael is that to Elriah he is remote and a little unloving and he DOES treat his time with El as a chore....although he doesn't see himself that way. So I can't decide if he's coming off as an unformed character, or if he's only been in situations where he would be remote and preoccupied. I'd say Lyhael cares, but he cares precisely as much as his position will let him.

Snippet:

Lyhael laughed shortly. "I trust you to speak bluntly. I trust you not to be turned by the tiniest impediment. And if you can answer my questions, I'll trust you with my daughter's teaching. Do you believe the Stag has truly gifted my daughter with Sight?"
"I believe she Sees."
"That's not what I asked, Fleder. Try again, and answer true. Did the Stag give my daughter this gift?"
Fleder looked Lyhael in the eyes. "I believe your daughter Sees. I don't know if it comes from the Stag." He paused. "I am not sure I believe in the Stag."
"Not sure?" Lyhael raised an eyebrow.
"Let's say I don't and have done with it."
"Fleder, are you a hypocrite?"
"Are you, Lyhael?"

Diversion: Tea

http://www.teamap.com/

 

I found that link yesterday whilst John and I pondered our teahouse options in the Boston area. We were missing Lovejoy's the beautous little tea shoppe we frequented in SF. And now we can tear through this list. (Sadly, it seems to be US only. Quick, somebody, write the site admins!)

 

Writing: Yesterday was my official day off--play with my family on WoW night. Actually, I didn't end up getting on WoW at all though. I ended up spending my evening resizing photos of my TO trip. I apparently took so many pics that it took me all of the evening to just resize them. I haven't even uploaded 'em to Flickr, I was that tired after sorting through 200+ photos and resizing the ones that made the cut.

Spent this morning running feudalist economics through my head. Ended up ranting about how the American dream is dead and has been replaced with techno-feudalism with corporations taking the place of our counts and squires. I'm thinking this is more material for WallWart, my science fiction story, and not so much for Stag....fun stuff, but I gotta stay focused.

 

Words of Wisdom via John

So I'm sitting there, having regaled John with the tidbit of the day, and explaining some of Fleder's motivations to John.

And John says: "So, he's like a Democrat who drives an SUV because it makes him feel good."

Um. Yeah.

Kibbles and Bits and Bits and Bits

I wrote about 500-600 words this morning. It went much smoother than last night, which leads me to believe that I should save the sacred brain cells for writing early mornings, and not spend them all on work. Alas, I am no early bird--performance at GP being highly atypical of me. But sacrifices must be made.

I've determined that my pattern of writing bits and pieces is still holding true. At least during draft work. This means I have to knit them together later, but hopefully that will prove less onerous as time wears on and I become more practised.

Favourite bit of the day:

Unlike Fleder's greylight, Elriah's globe was a little lopsided. It buzzed lightly and wobbled towards her like a demented bumble bee.

Anyway, time to get clothed and skibble off to work.

Brainstorming

I only wrote about two hundred words today of SoS. I really feel like work has sapped me, and I'm seriously contemplating revamping my schedule so I can get some early morning writing done.

But all was not lost. Instead of staring blankly at the screen, I wrote out a series of prompts based on things I want to have happen in this section. (Another 700 words or so of exposition and explanation followed.)  I tried writing brief characterisations that I can use for later--friction between Lyhael, Elriah's dad, and Fleder, her tutor, and how Fleder's basic atheism--thinly veiled--offends Lyhael and how Lyhael's belief offends Fleder, and how Elriah is sorta squashed in the middle. (And why Lyhael would still be amenable to having his daughter taught by Fleder.)

I'm trying to not rewrite any of the stuff I've done already, even the stuff from GP. I got some lovely advice there, but the advice that stuck with me most was to just write the damn thing, and let it reveal itself. Doesn't mean I'm not trying to think about how to parlay the GP advice into future story bits though. I went and marked up my story file, and have been relentlessly stocking it with notes and queries.

Fun thing about this story: It's fun to try and set up the differing belief systems even within the same overarching religion. Fleder is my dyed-in-the-wool atheist--he's not trying to be hypocritical but he is quiet about his lack of belief. Also, he's something of a scientist--he likes testing theories. Klaudus is my hypocritical atheist, who is very vocal about his purported beliefs, and makes use of the belief of others. Lyhael believes, but mostly because his life is comfortable and everything about his life justified his beliefs. (Even with the mishaps of his life, and the deaths of his children, Lyhael is still in a very comfy position as High Priest.) Elriah believes, and goes through a number of emotions relating to this--starting with love and moving right through to rage. Jaorin believes but doesn't feel worthy of the Stag, or his role as the son of the Stag. Zyastra has never believed and wasn't even raised with the beliefs, and finds them mostly ludicrous. The First Augur believes to the point of full on absolute psychopathic blind belief. Melantha believes but never really questioned her beliefs--when she does, she comfortably transitions to worshipping the sister goddesses as her spiritual needs dictate. She isn't hostile to the Stag though, even after transition. (Maybe she's the ecumenical one?)  Anyways, I wanted to play with varying levels of unbelief and see where they collide and crash. Should be fun.

Anyway--tired now. Gonna crash.