Where is the edge?
Well, it has been a ridiculously long white since I’ve updated here, but I guess maybe I can blame Easter. And Eli being sick…and me being sick…and, and…oh well. The visit to family for Easter went well; Eli got to play with family that doesn’t get to see him that often, and Jon and I got to relax a bit. On Saturday afternoon, I took a small nap…which of course, is an almost guaranteed way for me to have strange dreams.
This one was about vampires. Well, sort of.
Did that get your attention? It got mine. Blame Saeli for the revelation.
The hubby wants me to come up with a short story that we could possibly turn into a short video. I keep coming back to the Grimms concept because it has such potential to be a serial tale. (Quick recap, Grimms: a woman escapes from Arcadia and begins rescuing other children from the Fae. Some of these children join forces with her, take on fairy tale personas, and form a team called the Grimms, after Grimm’s Fairy Tales). While we were waiting to see Avatar, we started brainstorming about special Fae abilities these kids could have as a result of the time spend among the Fae.
Here’s what we came up with:
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I think this will be a fun story concept to play with.
I had read somewhere that a writer must love her characters. Seems pretty logical, because if the author doesn’t care about the lives of the people she’s creating, why would anyone else? I got to thinking about this in conjunction with Shades. Do I love these characters? Actually, there was only one character in Shades that I couldn’t respond with an immediate “yes”.
Raphel is my favorite character, hands down. Do I love him? Oh yes. Too much. I occasionally I have to make sure I’m not lavishing too much attention on the guy. He has such a strong personality that if I let him have too much leeway, he would take the story and run. Nix that, he wouldn’t run…Raphel would dangle the storyline in front of my face, smile at me with that sexy, challenging glint in his blue eyes, and dare me to try and take it from him. Who could resist? (Apparently, not me 
). I like to think that somewhere in that dark heart of his, he harbors a soft spot for Saeli, but honestly, I’m not sure. Beefing up the world around him, Aschera, the raider culture, etc. has actually helped keep him in line. Raphel might want everyone to think he’s got everything under control, but I have a whole world of problems I can use to take him down a notch, if I have to. I’ve already given him a rival cabal to worry about (that was a godawful chapter to write, btw).
Mora is actually keeping her distance from me in this rewrite. I do love her, though, because she’s always cool, and unflappable, and quietly sardonic, if the occasion arises. She’s such a tragic character, in that Raphel had already stolen her soul before Saeli ever met her. She’s a strong woman though, with a lot of history you only get glimpses of. She represents what Saeli could have become, if Raphel had really had the chance to break her. (I think that Saeli has more inner strength than Mora, and that Raphel would have never been able to completely conquer her, but it would have been a near thing.)
I’m having a lot of fun with Kaladan this time around. He’s a complicated man, and next to Saeli, he probably has the biggest character arc of anyone. You have to love a character who can throw out one-liners like this one:
Geris licked his lips. “You can’t blame me for being careful. This is enemy territory,” he said.
“Aye, we’ve only remained undiscovered in the largest Mantle city in the region for two whole moons,” Kaladan remarked. “Clearly Raphel’s subterfuge skills leave much to be desired.”
But his history is what really makes him fun to work with. In a way, as a Mantle turned Cowl turned Gray, he has the most perspective of any of them.
Cara is great because on the surface she seems like a typical young woman, flighty, scatterbrained, and doesn’t care for much other than socializing. But on the inside, she has an unwavering spirit and deep affection and loyalty to those she cares about. She’s the type of person who would never take charge unless they were forced into it, and then they would do an amazing job. Her early optimism and carefree nature is something I regret taking away from her at the end…but everyone in this story has to lose something.
Brendan…eh, who wouldn’t love Brendan? He’s the classic boy-next-door, who is willing to suffer in silence while the girl he loves dates someone else, just so she can be happy. Until he finds out the other guy is hurting her, of course…he won’t stand for that. Unfortunately, he’s a character that only really becomes important by dying.
Geris is like Peter Pettigrew from HP: one of those cowering, whiny villains who are so pathetic that it’s incredible how much trouble they manage to stir up. I like him for that, and because he gets what’s coming to him in the end. The High Priestess, aka Linserae. Avalgo. Othau. Isharyel. Hakarin. Adna. The Keeper of the Oath. Jalil…those are all my minors that really get screen time, and I love them all, for various reasons. And there are my gods: Yuril, Scisaxar, Naeth.
I considered every single character in Shades, and interestingly enough, the only one that I’m not sure I love is…Saeli. And I was like “uh-oh…I love everyone except my PROTAGONIST? That can’t be good.” It’s not that I don’t like her, it’s just that I don’t seem to have any real perspective on the matter. She is so much of ME, in this story, that I can’t distance myself from her. Saying I love Raphel or anyone else is like saying I love my husband…I’m analyzing my own feelings for another person. Trying to decide if I love Saeli is like me trying to be someone else trying to decide if they like me. She is…transparent, to me. I have been trying to give her more backbone this time around, and a few definite quirks that are NOT like me. But for the most part, how she reacts to things is pretty much how I would react, were I in her shoes. However, I’m pretty sure she’s not a Mary Sue…she screws up too much. She doesn’t always make the best decisions (clinging to Raphel for so long being the chief of these…but interestingly, I’m pretty sure I would make the same mistake).
The rewriting is going more slowly than I would like. I worry, sometimes, that I just don’t write quickly enough to survive in this industry. Even when I have a block of five hours to work with, I still don’t get a whole chapter done. I don’t know if I could really write a book per year, even if I had huge blocks of time to work in. I guess either it’s something you learn, or you find a publisher willing to let you take two and three years to produce a work. I’m beefing up some of the sexual tension in this story, even though I still don’t think I could market this as a genre romance. But the story is about Saeli and Raphel’s relationship, so I’m trying to keep the focus there, where I can.
We watched Spirited Away last weekend, and I was once again struck by the train sequence. I started to imagine what kind of stories the spirit train itself had collected before Chihiro even gets on: where it goes, who the spirits are that get on and off, its connection to the real world, etc. A vague story idea began to take shape in my head. Something about a character lost and riding the train between the worlds (or some other transportation device), trying to find his or her way home…or possibly a different character falling in love with the lost one.
I’ve let the idea percolate a little bit over the last few days, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
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I don’t know where this one will go in the queue. Possibly pretty far back, as it’s relatively undeveloped at this point.
In other news, I’m 5 scenes into the Shades rewrite, and am actually in scene 8 from the first draft. The High Priestess has a little more of a presence at this point than she did in the first draft, which I’m hoping will make her fight with Raphel more meaningful. I’ve actually almost reached that scene…yay for me!
The hubby and I finally got around to watching Mall Cop. I’d had my doubts about this movie from watching the previews, which made it look a whole lot more stupid than it actually was, but it was surprisingly good. I really liked how the crooks were named after Santa’s reindeer, and how edgy and modern they were. Young, athletic, tattoos, skateboards, trick bikes, etc. There were points during the movie where I actually regretted that they were the bad guys, because they were so cool.
It gave me the idea of assembling a team of anti-heroes, taking pseudonyms from popular culture, and creating an unlikely crime fighting squad. (Yes, I’m sure it’s been done before, but don’t burst my bubble just yet.) Other than Santa’s reindeer and the seven dwarfs, however, I could not think of any salient characters that come in groups (that aren’t already superheros). My first idea was to create a group of children whose mission is to save other children from getting kidnapped by Faeries…and my first inclination was to name them after Grimm’s fairy tale characters. But then I decided to see if I could come up with something better. I spent a few hours online looking up gods and goddesses from different pantheons all over the world…but the ones that people know are overused, and the ones that people don’t know would take too explaining to make them work.
So, I went back to the original idea.
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I think the next step is to actually construct a plot skeleton for Rora’s rescue story. I may enter that contest of the SCWG, which means I have to finish this before October 15th. *sigh* And I still have to get Shades done.
I discovered that I had a whole lot of little snippets of thoughts on Shades, scattered throughout my witch’s blog. Making separate posts of all of them would be tedious for me (and tedious for anyone to read), so I’m just going to dump them all into one.
Sep 30, 2008: My stories write themselves sometimes…my fingers type the words, but it’s my characters that pen their own lives, loves, deaths. I had made Raphel do something terrible to Saeli, but now in the story she’s swinging back around to him. He makes you ache inside, in more ways than one, and I feel it like she does when I write him. I was afraid that he was going to be too unbelievable on paper, not human enough, but then I thought wait…this is Saeli’s story. This is not about Raphel the man…this is about how Saeli sees him, which is different. And that’s half the point…in her head, he is a bit more than human. The man and the mental image of him disconnect, but see, that’s the backbone of the tragedy…the blind sight of love. You see someone and yet, and yet…you don’t see them at all.
Jan 15, 2009: Shades, my current writing project, is coming along pretty well. I’m about halfway finished with the story. I’ve written 37 chapters now, and my husband and I did a little calculation. If I spend at least two hours writing every day, I can get through a chapter in about three days. So, if I’ve already written thirty-something chapters and I estimate I’m about halfway through the story….if I continue to turn out a chapter every three days, I could have this thing done in three or four months! Likely it would be more like four, to account for days when I can’t write or when I’m working on the more difficult sections of the story, but even so…that isn’t nearly as long as I thought! I would have some serious editing to go back and do, but getting the story out in the first place is the hardest part.
I’m getting to a crucial part in the story where my heroine has to come to terms with the fact that she is in love with the man who killed her best friend. She’s been fighting it tooth and nail, but it is necessary for her to accept this about herself. She has to face down her own dark side if she’s ever going to free herself from his. I don’t remember exactly what I dreamed last night, but I’m quite certain he was in it, somewhere.
Perhaps it’s just as well I don’t remember.
Edit: As you might have noticed, those calculations didn’t pan out at all. A large part because as I got closer to the end, the scenes began to get longer and more complex. They became harder to write. And thus, they began to take more time to write. That is why it is now August, and I’m still not done.
Jan 27, 2009: I had an important realization come to me during one of the talks, just out of the blue. Saeli needs to screw up. I like my heroine, and thus I had been reluctant to let her make any real mistakes. Everything that has happened to her so far, even though she played a role, none of it was really her fault. But if she doesn’t make a big mistake, the climax just won’t happen. I am not particularly looking forward to this, for her sake.
Feb 13, 2009: 41 scenes so far. I’m hoping 20 more will take me through the end, but it really might be more like 30. Ugh. Right now I’m kind of pulling things out of a slow couple of scenes, and pretty soon I’m going to have to cover some time in a few terse paragraphs, just to keep things moving. Just to get things moving again. Writing what happens between major events is hard, because you have to know what happens but you don’t want to dwell on it too much. I should be writing right now, in fact, but I’m just kind of stuck.
Edit: Thankfully, that number is turning out to be more like 15 scenes left after 41. I am glad of that. The book is bloody too long as it is.
Apr 19, 2009: Raphel is my ultimate foil. He is the one person that, were I ever to actually meet him, I would be head-over-heels in love with him, and it would be the worst mistake I’d ever make. He has all the qualities I love in a man, but at the same time, he possesses all the ruses that would pull me in and make me overlook his controlling, abusive personality. He’s beautiful enough that even knowing the truth about him, I’d still be standing there spellbound, wishing I didn’t know. Almost willing to not know. Maybe anyone else in the world would see right through him, but Raphel could single-handedly destroy me as a person.
I should know…I created him to be that way.
When I dream about him, and it doesn’t happen often, he’s usually in the dream pulling everything along in his wake, and I’m following desperately behind. Trying to catch up with him. Trying to do something worthy of his notice…even if he’s up to no good (and he’s always up to something). See? Something in me blinds me to his mechanisms. In my dreams, I’m the naive girl who is particularly susceptible to his charm. I am Saeli.
That’s a usual dream. This one was different.
I’m currently engaged in writing the darkest point of the story. The scene with the biggest tragedy, and where Raphel moves from the role of antagonist to the role of outright villain. It is a pivotal moment, obviously.
In this dream I had, Raphel was there with all his charm, all his scheming, trying to control everything. But this time, he was my personal adversary. We were taking some sort of magic test, which is kind of ironic in a way. I knew he was out to sabatoge it, and I was out to stop him. He knew it, I knew it. Oh, he was still beautiful, and I still loved him, but this time it didn’t change anything. I’ve never really faced him as the enemy before…it was exhilarating, in a way. I think that’s really what woke me up.
Apr 22, 2009: I killed a god the other day.
Not a light thing to do, even in fiction. Even though I knew it would come to that, it was still a sad moment.
Now I’m in the process of turning my villain into a god himself. And that will not be pretty at all…he is not the type to handle the burden of godhood.
Flowing Tears - Kismet
Jun 25, 2009: I’m excited about the ending. I’m going to make it look like everything falls apart, and Saeli is about to lose everything. I want the reader to think she is giving up, when she’s actually pulling the card that will doom Raphel. (Actually, it will be something in the nature of giving Raphel a test, and he will fail it through his own pride…and doom himself). It will be sweet. Goodkind did it at the end of Wizard’s First Rule, and it was brilliant.
I’ve been reading a number of books on writing, and one of them gave me an important insight on the story I’m writing now. It talked about a story’s main character (who the story is about), protagonist (the good guy), and viewpoint character (who is telling the story). Now, in most stories, these three are one and the same: the main character is the hero, and he or she is telling the story. Usually, at least the viewpoint character is also the protagonist (you don’t get too many stories where the villain is the storyteller).
Saeli is my viewpoint character. She’s also my protagonist. I’ve been saying, up until now, that this story is about her: her journey, her trials, her redemption. There’s sometimes a discrepancy between the story you plan to write, and the story that actually comes out. I think I just found mine. I really didn’t want the story to be about Raphel. I wanted it to be about Saeli, and Naeth, and this incredible relationship between them that ultimately changes the world. But the problem is…the story I’ve actually written, it’s all about Raphel and his downfall.
He is the main character. He is the focal point. Better I recognize that now, rather than keep trying to change it or ignore it.
(Raphel continues to surprise me with his knack for making himself the center of attention. I think I wanted to keep thinking Saeli was my main because I instinctively knew that Raphel wanted the spot…and I was afraid to concede it to him.)
Up until now, I thought that the viewpoint character had to be the main character. But if that’s not necessarily the case, that gives me the freedom to let the story be what it is. Raphel’s status as the main character doesn’t have to diminish Saeli’s importance. I think I have it right, in having him as the lead and her as the viewpoint. He’s driving the story: everything that happens, happens in response to his decisions. However, Saeli is the character who is impacted the most by him. She has the most to lose. Your POV character should almost always be the one with the highest stakes.
But see, now I have to rethink where I was going thematically with this. If I recognize that the story I have written is about Raphel, then Naeth isn’t quite as important. It’s not that I can’t end it the way I planned…it’s just that the things I thought I was going to be focusing on the most, aren’t quite so important now. Naeth will still save Saeli, but the biggest emotional impact is going to come from Raphel’s fall. I can see that this is where my momentum is taking me…and if I try to manipulate that, the story is going to go screeching off the tracks.
Maybe this is all for the best. Raphel is one of those characters that won’t go down easily, so you have to take him down hard. It is fitting, then, that the greatest emotional moment of the story would come at his downfall. Naeth’s return becomes more of an extra little perk at the end, instead of the emotional crux I had planned to make it.
Saeli and Naeth’s story may have to wait for a sequel. I already have the glimmerings of one…isn’t that terrible?
Aug 12, 2009: Currently, I’m about 2 or 3 scenes away from the ending. I’ve been working on the climax scene, and it’s been going….well, frankly rather badly. I’m at a point where I just want to be done with the story so I can start editing, start cutting, start rearranging and making the whole thing come together. Not to mention I’d like to start working on some other things. I’m also a little cold on the story right now, so everything I write sounds pretty stupid to me once it’s on the screen. I don’t think it actually is any worse than my usual standard, but it’s hard to keep going when it feels that way, you know?
I’ll get it done. I think I just need to get back into a groove.
Written just after watching the Prison Break finale. Was in a bit of a dark mood.
May 15, 2009: I read books as a writer, now, unfortunately…and it seems that I’ve begun watching shows this way too. Where you read (or watch), and you’re analyzing the plot, analyzing the characters’ strengths, weaknesses, moral dilemmas, analyzing how the writers are doing their jobs.
Now, the whole Kellerman rescue ending was nice and tidy…but faintly reeked of Deus ex Machina. All the pain they’ve gone through and this guy just appears out of nowhere and saves all of their arses? Just like that? *sigh* But honestly, I don’t know how they could possibly have wrapped up everything in two hours without either doing what they did, or killing everybody. Now I absolutely hate it when a work of fiction ends with everyone dying…makes me feel vaguely cheated. I mean, come on, if I’m going to get emotionally invested in these characters, I have a right to be upset if you kill them all at the end. So, of the two, I prefer the outside savior method.
The moment they revealed Sara’s pregnancy, as a writer I had a sinking suspicion that she was going to end up raising that baby alone. An instinct, perhaps…why pull her emotional investment away from Michael, unless he’s going to be out of the picture soon? The show has always been a little too gritty to support a happily ever after for everyone. I’m actually glad they didn’t take Michael out in a violent manner, although normally I’d rather the hero go out with guns blazing, metaphorically speaking. However, there’s a certain tragic irony to him succumbing to a brain tumor…his mind, his greatest asset, being what kills him. As a writer, I can appreciate that. Writers are cruel people, let me tell you.
Ramin Djawadi - Happily Ever After
Edit: Okay, so after I wrote this, I watched The Final Break (the hidden episodes that tell what happened in that four year period at the end of the TV finale). Turns out, Michael did go down with guns blazing, as I put it. But I believe he did that only because he knew the tumor was going to kill him anyway. If a man is doomed no matter what, I can understand why he would choose the more honorable death, saving the woman he loves and his unborn baby…rather than lingering on in a hospital bed. It was still cruel.
I still cried.
It got me thinking about something. Part of writing means you have to hurt the characters you love, and sometimes they have to die. I respect writers who can kill characters (and leave them dead). (I do not respect writers, however, who kill everybody in the end because it’s easier than resolving the plot, or because they think the quantity of deaths is going to create the emotional response. Action movies and books are, alas, rather prone to this…I’m glad they didn’t pull this card in Prison Break.) And yet, I can say things like, “I have to kill this character”…but…
Death is scary…emotional…difficult. Thinking about what it’s like, what it’s really like, to stand in front of a gravestone and know that a person is gone…that they exist now only in your memory. There’s no pain, no despair, quite like it. Singular. Exquisite. Humans have fought the specter of oblivion since the dawn of time. It’s our darkest fear. As a human being, I fear my own vulnerability to Death…but as a writer, I love it. That frightens me, a little bit.
Sure, I cried when I saw Michael’s gravestone, but still, there was a part of me that was pleased. The writer in me was satisfied over his death.
I’ve killed characters in my fiction. And I’ll admit, it’s actually one of the most satisfying parts of the writing process. Not the death, but the powerful emotion behind it and created by it. I don’t just kill characters…I like killing characters, and doing it well. Making it mean something. Making it tragic. Making it cathartic. Making the characters that survive that much stronger.
In the story I’m writing right now, the body count is up to four, and two more are going down before the end. One of those is my main antagonist, who, next to my heroine, has the second largest spotlight in the novel. Actually, in all honestly, sometimes he eclipses her. I’ve always known he has to die, but I admit it’s been tempting to let him survive somehow…that’s how compelling he is to me. But I’m the writer, and he has to go down for the sake of the story.
But…what does that make me inside? What is the difference between me and a serial killer, save that I don’t pull the trigger in real life? I have a noble cause?
Nightphoenix (my writer self) is utterly ruthless…she takes pleasure in beating characters down and dredging their nobility out of the depths of their hopeless despair. Everything for the story. I know I’m not like that with real people, people I love…but occasionally I am brought face-to-face with the fact that there’s a part of me that takes pleasure in a good death.
Tonight was one of those nights, and I have to admit, it disturbed me a little.
Mariah Dennison, fantasy writer and artist. I have finished the first book in a trilogy, and am currently working on the second.
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