Ye Olde Blaaaaaaugh

Note the scare quotes in the title of this post.

Remember when I noted my bout of drunkeness at the writing retreat? Well, my sister told my dad. My dad told my mother, and I got a phone call asking how my trip to Canada was.

After a period of time, my mother nerved herself up to broach the subject, and said, "So I hear you had a fun time with your Canadian friends."

Me, clueless: Yeah, pretty good time.

Mom: I heard you were up to some....interesting escapades with those "Canadian friends."

Me, wracking my brain and wondering if you can call writing every day in your room an interesting escapade: I guess I wrote a lot.

Mom: That's not what I heard. I heard you got in a little bit of trouble with your "Canadian friends."

Me, imagining Dave and Laurie and Peter and Sara: Um, no, not really.

Mom: You were talking a bit oddly with your "Canadian friends."

Me (things are starting to dawn): Mom, what Canadian friends are you talking about?

Mom: Rum.

Me: Oooooooohhhhh. (pause) There was no rum. (ed: This is strictly true.) There was Baileys and port. (ed: No, not in the same glass. Ick. Peter saved that experiment for later in the week, and man, was THAT vile.)

Mom: Uh huh.

Me: There were no escapades. I drank a lot of water and was sleepy. That's all that happened.

Mom: That's not what I heard.

Me: And I called a few people. But really, I had a lot of water and nothing happened.

Mom: (very skeptical) You were pretty plastered from all reports.

Me: I threw up a little.

Mom: I worry about you.

Me: Well, I haven't done it since. (ed: Also true.)

Mom: Well, I hope you've learned your lesson.

Me: I think so. (ed: Lesson learned. Don't drunk-dial your sister who will then fink on you to the 'rents. I called Rachel up and she confessed mentioning it to Dad in a conversation about learning from other people's mistakes. Woo hoo. And the family--or at least the older generation--remains convinced that my life outside of Utah is a drunken debauched swirl of hedonistic revelry and sin! I said to Rachel, "You know I don't drink very much." Rachel, innocently, "Yes, I don't know where Mom gets her ideas.")

...

Anyway, that's going into Lis's new book of parental euphemisms. "Canadian friends." It's not like what I was drinking was even particularly Canadian, except for being bought at a Canadian liquor store. Head-meets-desk.

I mean, this is the second time in my life I've drunk enough to throw up. The first time was in San Francisco, while I was dating Lee, and we were staying at Merrick's. Two times in six years I've been THAT drunk. Yeah. Woo. Raging alcoholic here.

Abigail liked night the best, better than day, because night made the windows turn into dark mirrors. And whenever she was near a dark mirror, she was never lonely.

Every evening she sat on the couch in the living room with the curtains drawn open as far as they could go. In the reflection of the shadow-blacked window, she saw her parents cleaning up after the evening meal, going about their evening chores behind her back. She saw the room reflected, silvery grey against the night sky. She did not see herself. She saw....him.

She never saw herself in dark mirrors. In the black granite countertop, in the oven door, in the bathroom with only the nightlight on, in the pupils of her mother's eyes, she never saw herself.

Only the Capricorn's Child.

Nobody else ever saw him. Nobody else ever saw anybody but themselves.

He was the best playmate she ever had. He told her things nobody else could.

I'm going to preface this with: I've been writing.

That said, I assigned myself some homework. I've been dissecting the structure of Dune, which I regard as a damn fine book. I've been trying to see what I can learn from this classic of science fiction, in regards to characterisation, structure, and plot. I've been going through and writing down the chapters, which characters are in them, the major plot points for each chapter, and how many mini-scenes in a chapter. I've gotten to the Harkonnen/Sardukaur invasion of the keep at Arrakkeen and here's what I've found so far:

+ Herbert's chapters are fairly short, but dense. So far, there isn't a single chapter or mini scene that hasn't advanced the plot or given us important information for later set-ups.

+ Maybe I've read Dune so many times that I really regard all the characters as old friends. But....after doing this analysis, I'm REALLY surprised at how little face time some of them actually have. Chapters 1 and 3 focus on Paul's relationship to his mother and Paul's Bene Gesserit training. Chapter 4 covers his relationship with Thufir and Gurney and reflect his mentat and physical training respectively. Chapter 5 has Dr. Yueh (the traitor revealed in chapter 2, a Baron Harkonnen chapter) and his relationship to Paul. And then our last chapter on Caladan, has Paul's relationship with his father. Each of these is no more than a handful of pages, and yet, sets the tone for me feeling as though I really know the back story. Herbert does this very economically.

+ The first six chapters set up Paul's character and his peril. Herbert does a good job of telling you that Paul has been trained for years, and then subsequently showing how he thinks and acts through interactions with Jessica, Reverend Mother Gaius Helen etc, Hawat, Gurney, Yueh,  his father, and later, Kynes. By the time he gets dumped in the desert, you have no problems believing that while it's still a difficult task to survive, he'll have the chops to get it done.

I'm studying this because I have a character who is a somewhat precocious child who grows into a fairly powerful adult. The situations are not the same entirely, but the similarities in themes of passing into adulthood and arcane knowledge have made me look at Dune with a new eye to developing character.

One final thing I've noticed is that my dissection of Dune has not lessened my enjoyment of the story, nor my appreciation for Herbert's craft. If anything it has deepened even more. Which just confirms my feeling that Dune deserves its status as a classic work of science fiction.

One final caveat: I'm not trying to do anything silly like emulate Herbert's chapter structure or plot. I don't think writing is so formulaeic. What I am looking for is general patterns of character development, and how he develops Paul's relationship to these other characters.

....

Now I've also got a slightly connected musing on internal dialogues. Dune is chock-a-block full of them. It's a technique that works well for the story, although it has been known to drive some people crazy or confuse people who don't read as much. Herbert utilizes a third person omniscient point of view with an awful lot of internal monologues.

I tend to utilize internal monologues, although I feel I do it on a more sparing scale than Herbert. Also, I almost never have more than one POV in a scene. (So far in this book, there has been only two POVs total: Elriah and Fleder. Jaorin and Zyastra and Tamre all get POVs later though.)

Now when I was getting a review of some recent work at a writer's group last week, somebody noticed my internal monologues. They also noticed that I occasionally use markers such as "Elriah thought" to tag some of the internal dialogue. While I try to use these sparingly, I do try to use them on occasion, partly to remind the reader who the person thinking is. My critic was of the opinion that I should axe them altogether, but I'm not so sure. I view the internal monologue much as I would dialogue. And I hate it when you have large chunks of dialogue with no tags interlarded in there. You know the sort of thing.

"He can't do that."
"Of course, he can. He's the king."
"But he'll tip his hand. Our enemies will know exactly what we plan."
"Try telling that to his majesty."
"Believe me, I will."

So, that's a crappy example, but it ANNOYS. You have no idea who is saying what. I also hate conspiracy scenes where all the characters are hooded and cloaked and you have to go back through and try to figure out who said what. I have at least one scene where Elriah is overhearing gossip in the Keep and can't see who is talking, but I tried to immediately give identifiers to the voices she hears.

But I digress. I try to give tags occasionally to the internal monologues, depending on how recently the POV character was mentioned. Also....I try to keep it in mind that some people prefer their books on tape or like reading aloud. I adore Orson Scott Card's characterisation, but when I read his book Enchantment aloud, I occasionally had to ADD tags myself so that the people I was reading aloud to would understand that somebody had just THOUGHT something instead of saying it. When you're looking at the page, you have the italics, but when you are reading aloud, the other person can't see those italics.

Anyway, I am curious for people who read and people who write: tags on internal monologue? Annoying? Okay on occasion? What do you think?

This week, I went back to my early morning schedule. Hard as it is to make sure I write in the mornings--never been a morning person, not really--my productivity is best at this time. Work as of late has been a little creatively draining. So it's best to get some of those neurons fired early in the direction of the Stag.

So far this week, I've had a conversation between Fleder and Elriah about the advisability of her passing on her knowledge to the girls who don't have the same lessons as her. It's not that he doesn't think she shouldn't....but that she shouldn't openly flaunt the traditions without thinking why she's doing it. She shouldn't do things because she can. He's pretty tolerant (as far as this patriarchal society allows) but he's also got a healthy respect for what happens when you try and buck the traditions and people don't like it.

I also jumped back a bit and worked on a scene I had skipped earlier...the one where Lyhael actually tells his daughter she's allowed to be taught.  I think the fact that even a talented girl has to struggle to get the lessons she needs ...whereas a boy with lesser talent would be given them as a matter of course....goes a ways to show the glass ceiling at work in the Yn Greneiri. There are women YG--two of them are friends of Fleder's, in fact--but they are relatively rare and have to scramble to keep up with the men, as their training starts later, at ten or twelve, when the boys are starting as young as six or eight. This is because of a belief that women's magic arrives with puberty. (I hate hate hate this trope in fantasy--it happens a lot actually--and I thought I'd simply turn it on it's head by making it a common BUT ERRONEOUS belief in the Stag world.)

And then again today, I had Fleder teaching Elriah things. Now I find it interesting that my writing the lessons has focused less on the actual magic than the lessons Fleder's teaching her unconciously or conciously about human nature and how to be an adult.  And actually, I wonder if that's developing into an unconcious theme. He basically tells her today that her way of seeing the magic...the ability to shift between a holistic view and a view that breaks things down to individual components....it's useful for the magic, but it's more useful in understanding people. And of course, Elriah likes to see the world in view of secrets, so she thinks of this as Fleder's secret: That people are always more important than the magic. (And not just in the sappy altruistic way you might think.)

Anyways, I like how the characters are developing. And I think returning to this schedule is good.  I'm fully expecting to have to rewrite a lot of this stuff in re-writes...because I think the characters are developing still. But while I want them to be consistently themselves. I also want to have them develop under the eyes of the reader a little as well, as the reader gets to know them. So it'll be interesting to see what happens when I finish and I know more fully who the characters are.

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.

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.

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."

What I REALLY think about today's FBoFW strip:

For Worse or For Worse

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.

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?"