A Very Nice Start to the Week
Jan. 9th, 2007 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marfiskHad a great run at Selkie today. I read over 24,000 words and went through a range of emotions. I can't tell if I'm kidding myself, if somehow after 2 years I'm still too close to this manuscript, or if I managed to put together a darn tight first draft. So far, and I'm well past half way, I've only found minor wording issue and a few little continuity items that were all fixable within a paragraph. Now I am reading for story right now, so when I sit back and contemplate, I may find other things that are wrong or where one emotion drags the story down. But for right now, I'm happy with it.
One odd note about how I work though. I really believe in introducing people when I need to, even if they are major players in the game. Though he's not a POV character yet, I just checked my outline and the character introduced now, with only about 40k left in the book to go, will get his POV moments. He's a pivotal character and his transformation is essential, but he had no place in the story before this point.
I've heard people argue about introducing characters late, and I've seen it done poorly, so I can't entirely disagree, however, I seem to trend this way. My stories may be more of a process than a happening, though this realization of a pattern is too new to hammer down. I don't start with a bunch of people and then mess with them. I tend to start with one or two pivotal people and grow the cast as those original folks interact with others and expand their circle. Sometimes that expansion happens in the beginning, and sometimes it doesn't happen until toward the end. Still, I'd feel manipulated if people were introduced before their time just for the sake of them being known when the time came, so I'm not unhappy about the circumstances.
That said, I'm glad I'm aware of the choice because it makes it a choice. In Kyrnie (now retitled Shadows of the Sun), I originally believed Tan would not play a crucial role and so he didn't exist in the beginning of the novel. However, his was a false absence. He was present in the time and place of the beginning, I just hadn't realized his importance. So in one of the many rewrites of that beginning, he finally came into his own. That was not true of another character. She was in a distant time and place and jumping into her POV in the beginning would have been distracting and disruptive.
That's how I feel about Edgar. Had he entered the Selkie story toward the beginning, it would have been a chance meeting while the father was out at sea, a throwaway scene for the simple purpose of alerting readers that there is another character out there. In contrast, I did have a chance meeting with another character (who never gets the POV) because it was both to set up how the villagers treated Gwen and an event later in the book. The scene wasn't a throwaway because it served two purposes.
A thought. This is the difference, I believe, between story seeding and plot seeding. The first I don't tend to use, the second I do. It's story seeding to reveal the full cast before the appropriate time just so readers can look back and say, yeah, I knew that person was there. Plot seeding is to reveal only those who serve a dual purpose and whose behavior can foreshadow events to come.
Anyway, those are my somewhat scattered thoughts on the issue.
Statistics because I usually provide them:
Read - 80316
Total - 119315
To read - 38999
One odd note about how I work though. I really believe in introducing people when I need to, even if they are major players in the game. Though he's not a POV character yet, I just checked my outline and the character introduced now, with only about 40k left in the book to go, will get his POV moments. He's a pivotal character and his transformation is essential, but he had no place in the story before this point.
I've heard people argue about introducing characters late, and I've seen it done poorly, so I can't entirely disagree, however, I seem to trend this way. My stories may be more of a process than a happening, though this realization of a pattern is too new to hammer down. I don't start with a bunch of people and then mess with them. I tend to start with one or two pivotal people and grow the cast as those original folks interact with others and expand their circle. Sometimes that expansion happens in the beginning, and sometimes it doesn't happen until toward the end. Still, I'd feel manipulated if people were introduced before their time just for the sake of them being known when the time came, so I'm not unhappy about the circumstances.
That said, I'm glad I'm aware of the choice because it makes it a choice. In Kyrnie (now retitled Shadows of the Sun), I originally believed Tan would not play a crucial role and so he didn't exist in the beginning of the novel. However, his was a false absence. He was present in the time and place of the beginning, I just hadn't realized his importance. So in one of the many rewrites of that beginning, he finally came into his own. That was not true of another character. She was in a distant time and place and jumping into her POV in the beginning would have been distracting and disruptive.
That's how I feel about Edgar. Had he entered the Selkie story toward the beginning, it would have been a chance meeting while the father was out at sea, a throwaway scene for the simple purpose of alerting readers that there is another character out there. In contrast, I did have a chance meeting with another character (who never gets the POV) because it was both to set up how the villagers treated Gwen and an event later in the book. The scene wasn't a throwaway because it served two purposes.
A thought. This is the difference, I believe, between story seeding and plot seeding. The first I don't tend to use, the second I do. It's story seeding to reveal the full cast before the appropriate time just so readers can look back and say, yeah, I knew that person was there. Plot seeding is to reveal only those who serve a dual purpose and whose behavior can foreshadow events to come.
Anyway, those are my somewhat scattered thoughts on the issue.
Statistics because I usually provide them:
Read - 80316
Total - 119315
To read - 38999
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 04:15 pm (UTC)As a reader, I usually feel cheated when suddenly somebody who ought to have been around appears and starts talking. In my head, I perceive it much the same way I perceive a God-in-the-box ending: "What? The characters the author picked aren't good enough to carry the story? Or couldn't the author be bothered to go back and set this character up properly?"
Possibly this is something I only notice because I write, too, and it's very hard not to have background thoughts about how I would have done it. And for sure there are exceptions. Stephen King, for instance, does it all the time. But then he's always jumping into new characters, so if one of them happens to be near the end, that's nothing new. And in a quest story, where the physical location changes, it's easier to accept.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 07:41 pm (UTC)In one of my novels, I have a character who is often with his best friend. When he dies, the best friend takes over that portion of the POV, but with his own perspective, beliefs, and angst. It wouldn't have made sense for him to be a POV character before, but the reader already knew him and, I hope, finds the shift interesting because he isn't exactly as he appeared to the first man.
But usually, if I bring in a character late it's because they're not physically present and to make them so would be an obvious authorial device.
Cheers,
Margaret
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 02:43 pm (UTC)Has it really been two years? Clearly, I have not plagued you enough. :P
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 06:28 pm (UTC)