Where is the edge?
Go me, I even spelled fortuitous right on my first try.
So a month or two ago, there was this author that had been recommended to me, and I kept telling myself I should check her out. Then, at the Cassandra Claire and Holly Black event in Vero, that same author was recommended yet again, by those two no less. I said to myself, “I really do need to look into that.”
Then, of course, I completely forgot the author’s name. Read more…
Gotta give the guy some credit. He seems like such a simple character: classic Boy-Next-Door, the one who’s perfect for the heroine but she just doesn’t see it. (In Saeli’s defense, I’m not sure Brendan’s actually “better” for her, in terms of compatibility. I do think they could have made it work, and work well, if she’d been willing to give him that chance.) But there’s a lot going on with him on the inside. He’s actually a bit darker than most boy-next-doors; he has some anger management and depression problems, though they’re buried pretty deep. Throughout this story he’s going to be dealing with feelings he’s never had to face before, and it’s going to dredge some of that up. (Seriously. Making Brendan angry is like pissing off a volcano. Bad idea. Unless you’re Raphel. He seems to enjoy watching people blow up emotionally.)
…is an experience I’m enjoying. I think part of the reason she’s such a hard nut to crack is because of how much she holds in. First person lets all that come out, while preserving her facade. Part of it is her own personality: she’s a private and introverted soul by nature, and opens up to people only slowly. But part of it stems from her effort to be good enough to wear the Mantle. White Mantle society frowns on open displays of emotion; they are quiet, reserved people (on the outside, anyway). Saeli feels things very passionately, but over the years she’s learned to dampen that fire, and only show what she thinks people want to see. Her face still gives her away if her emotions run too high, though, and she hates that about herself.
Saeli has learned to hold back her emotions to the point where she’s actually made herself a little bit numb on the inside. But once she does accept that she does feel something, it burns through her. I’m about four scenes back into the story now, and she’s spent two of those either watching Raphel or actually interacting with him. She’s definitely physically attracted to him, but interestingly enough, it hasn’t crossed her mind yet. It’s that pseudo-numbness. How she feels is irrelevant to her…how she conducts herself is everything. She’ll analyze her feelings later, in private, probably in great detail. And once she does realize what those physical reactions mean…oh, she’ll fall. Hard.
She’s also something of a pessimist, or at least a cynic, in her head. She always braces for the worst, or she looks at situations and starts thinking of how it could have been worse. She’s always examining herself, asking why she feels the way she does, criticizing herself when what she sees doesn’t line up with what she thinks should be there. She thinks through everything. A lot of that is tied up in years of thinking she’s not good enough…she won’t shake that easily. Raphel is going to nail her with that, especially once she starts dealing with her fears of not being good enough for him.
Saeli also thinks she’s a terrible liar, when in reality she’s a fairly good one. It’s just that she hates lying, and is thus sure it’s written all over her…but she’s so used to holding back that keeping secrets is not that much of a step for her. Brendan is the truly terrible liar. Cara’s average. Raphel makes an art of it.
She’s got some snark in her, sometimes, but it’s not a big part of her personality.
Anywho, that’s where I am with her so far.
I’m thinking of swapping the point of view in Shades from third person to first person. I figure, hey, since I’m planning on dismantling the beginning yet again, this is the time. The only head we’re ever in is Saeli’s anyway, so it won’t be as big of a switch as it could be.
The thing is, I’ve realized that the one character in the story whom I cannot seem to really connect with is Saeli. Everyone else has a self, a voice that I can feel inside. I can picture that essence and I have an instant grasp on that character; I have a snapshot of who that person is inside and where they are coming from. Everyone except my protagonist, that is. I think the only way I’m going to break into her head is to write from her head.
I actually don’t know if that will work, ultimately, for the story. There are a couple of places in my third person POV where I deliberately back off a little bit from Saeli, for artistic purposes and such. I never lose her, but sometimes I’m in her mind and sometimes I’m maybe a little further over her shoulder. I’ll lose that, but I may make up for it with more direct introspection from Saeli. I need to break her off from me. The problem is, she and I approach life in very much the same sorts of ways: we think things through, try to see it from every angle, we hesitate, we dither, we question every move we make…and we’re maybe a little bit too willing to take people at their word. She deals with Raphel the same way I would, if it was me in her shoes. (Because, you may remember, it was. Only maybe not so bad.)
She’s not really so different from me, but ultimately, she’s not me. And I, as the writer, need to grasp this difference and let Saeli be who she really is. First person would also fit better with the dark, introspective direction this story seems to be going in. I admit, I want it to be a bit more literary than the norm of what’s on the YA shelf right now.
See, this is what happens during 3+ hour drives with a busted CD player. I had an idea for Shades in the car yesterday, driving back from Gainsville. It would dump the reader into the action sooner, and it would eliminate some of the shadiness of my characters’ early motivations. The problem is, it involves a complete restructuring of the first book. Again.
Today I managed to write a pretty good chunk of Shades. I got Saeli started in the portal form, and brought the first of my obstacles, Geris, onto the scene. Today I almost managed to write myself into a corner, when the established rules of magic in my world prevented me from doing something the simple way. Please Login or Register to view this.
Anyway, that’s why we’ve taken a break from our regular schedule of bloggish activities. I’ve actually been, you know, productive.
And the apartment is clean! It’s great! I can actually concentrate on clearing up some areas that always get ignored because I’m too busy trying to catch up with a backload of dishes and laundry.
Well, I never did get around to posting something in here yesterday. Alas, alas. However, I’ve been pretty productive with my writing, so I say that makes up for it. I finished the chapter that was bogging me down, and am a good ways into the next one. I find myself making Raphel much nicer this time around, in the way he says things..which is interesting, because I’ve apparently also been making him meaner, too. There is a definite disconnect between his words and his actions, and the gulf is growing as the story goes on. He will do something awful to Saeli, but then he will list all his reasonable, unavoidable reasons for doing so, and show himself to be as worried and frustrated and human as she are, and he doesn’t like doing stuff like that, but…and Saeli finds herself nodding her head in agreement without a clear idea of how she got there. It’s all very underhanded. He knows if he’s outright mean, he’ll scare her off for good.
I’ve also been working on a book cover idea. It’s a scene that doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the story, but is rather a nod to the initial dream I had that inspired the story in the first place. I was with some dark-clad people, and we were hiding in a big city from a group of cold, white-robed people marching down the street, chanting like monks. I wasn’t one of the dark people, though, and I had the impression that I was actually supposed to be with the white-robed ones. But I wasn’t really one of them, either, though I was more like them than I was like the dark ones. But the dark ones weren’t really so bad, I found. (Thus, Saeli’s unique position in the world was born). Originally I had called the two groups the Blacks and the Whites, but it was suggested to me that those names were much too un-politically correct, and I agreed.
Scan:
This is the scan of the original drawing I did. It’s cobbled together from a bunch of different sources, which I put together in Photoshop and printed out. I then did what many might consider cheating, and traced straight from that composition using a lightbox. I would torn my hair out trying to get that architecture right otherwise. I’ve had to tweak the image sufficiently that I no longer feel guilty about it. (Wait…no. I never felt guilty about it. Oh well.) It looks weird at the bottom because the drawing is bigger than the scanner, and so I had to scan it in two pieces. The drawing isn’t going to show up on the finished piece; it’s only a guide for my Photoshopping. The figures in the foreground are Raphel and Saeli (if that wasn’t obvious). That is the High Priestess leading the line of professors; I haven’t decided who the others are (if anyone). That’s supposed to be the city Temple in the background.
Value sketch:
I learned about the concept of an underpainting in one of my Stetson classes, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually *needed* to do one. The purpose of the underpainting is to figure out where all the lights and darks will be. Because my source images came from so many places, my source composition had no consistant value scale whatsoever. (Plus, they were all daytime images, and this is a nighttime picture). The final image won’t be sepia-toned.
Where I’m at now:
Here’s where I’m at in the coloring process. I made the scene take place in the purple hour, Saeli’s favorite time of day. Right now I’m just filling in the flat colors; I will go back in different layers to put in the shadows and highlights. White buildings at night are interesting, to say the least. Black and white clothing isn’t much better. I’m trying to make it so that the grays on the left side of the image are made from purples, and the grays on the right are made from yellows, so that I have a warm gray/cool gray contrast. Saeli is pretty dead neutral.
The amount of work I can get done when I’m not at home is astronomical compared to what I do at my desk. I wish Books-a-Million opened earlier than 10AM. Places like Panera Bread and various coffee shops open early, but you really aren’t supposed to just sit in there without buying something (some places have a policy), and that could very quickly get expensive. I suppose I could sit outside and work (maybe when it gets a little warmer, heh). I got a lot of writing done Monday…if I can do that on all the days when Eli is at school, I can have the first book of Shades done by the end of March, which is my goal.
Last Friday I used the last of my Barnes & Noble gift card money (you know, the cards that my New Years thief didn’t steal because thieves apparently don’t read…), and bought myself a book entitled: First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner. I initially picked up the book because the title intrigued me. “30 days? Yeah, right. Maybe if you don’t have a life.”
Well, the book is actually a very comprehensive system for outlining a story before you start writing it. This is something I could use. I immediately saw how one could combine the system with the principles of GMC that I learned at the conference, and do most of the legwork beforehand. Well, there’s a section for outlining a manuscript that’s already in progress, so I’ve spend most of today working the first book of Shades into an outline form. The reason for this is that I’ve reached a point in the rewrite where I feel like I’m running the story into the ground trying to get from point A to point B. I need to reestablish the whole picture in my head.
I’ve really been concentrating on turning what was the first section of the story into a complete book…determining the logical order of escalating stakes, figuring out where the downtime is, where the black moment is, where the resolution is. The good news is, there really aren’t any gaping holes…maybe little minor potholes. I haven’t even had to change the order of any scenes…I’ve just had to occasionally clarify what’s going on. There are a few places where I’m going to tweak little things, and make character motivation more clear, but other than that, outlining has been relatively easy.
Which proves that I have a pretty intuitive grasp of story arc, and I can apparently do GMC without knowing what the heck that is. Good for me! Now with my half a stick and my highly evolved brain *pokes self in the eye with the stick* ouch, I shall make fi-yah! Oh wait, wrong movie. Now I have the tools to do these things deliberately, without it taking several years per story. *cough*
The goal is still to finish the first book of Shades by the end of March. Mid-March, if I must.
I did a little agent research tonight…looking up some of the names I was given at the conference and adding them to my list of possibilities. Added another blog to the blogroll as well…an agent named Jennifer Jackson.
Once again, I am contemplating splitting Shades across more than one book. I’ve thought about this before, and talked about it on LiveJournal. I decided then that the segments of the story weren’t complete enough to stand alone, and abandoned the idea. But now that pesky YA word count problem is cropping up again. I’m honestly not sure I can keep Shades even under 150,000 words without sacrificing story elements, stuff that I want to be in there. Yeah, maybe the story could be told without some of that stuff…maybe it’s not absolutely, positively, vitally necessary stuff…but it just wouldn’t be the same story. Not to me. I don’t believe in sacrificing story just because the publishing industry doesn’t think 16-18 year-olds won’t read long books. (Maybe they should try it sometime!)
While doing this rewrite, I’ve been raising stakes wherever I can: on Saeli, on Raphel, on Aschamon. In doing so, however, I’ve made the buildup to the portal scene much more intense. At this point, that scene is going to function like a climax, whether I want it to or not. And having a climactic scene in the middle of this book is risky, cause I will have established a level of tension that I probably won’t be able to maintain for the rest of the story. This first part could function as its own story now…not a stand-alone, but it has a beginning, middle, and end, and the ending does resolve what the characters set out to do (successfully portal onto another world).
If I combine Dheu and Caosgi into a second book, and have the ending complete the trilogy, it could work. Right now the first section of the second draft stands at 60,499 words…once I get it done, it will probably be somewhere in the 80,000 range (which is the recommended top end for YA). The Dheu and Caosgi stories together come out to 99,478 words, but that’s still including a whole section of Dheu that I’m planning to nix. With a good rewrite, I could probably make it about the same length as the first section. The ending has 35,422 at present, but it’s not done. I doubt it will be as long as the other two sections, but if I can get it up to 50,000 words, it will fall within YA guidelines.
The first book, then would tell the story of Saeli’s falling in with Raphel, her subsequent falling away from and eventual exile from her school (symbolized, specifically, by her relationship with Brendan), and her departure from Verre. The second book would pick up on Dheu, and chronicle Raphel’s quest and his rise to immortality. The third book would then be about Saeli’s quest to bring Raphel down. Each of these is its own story, and though they ought to be read in order to really get the whole picture, I think I could write them in such a way that one could still follow the bare bones of each story without having read the others. Robin Hobb’s Assassins, Liveship, and Tawny Man trilogies are like that…you get the gist of the characters and where you are in the story even if you haven’t read the others. In fact, I broke my own rule with the Tawny Man trilogy, and read the second book first (I couldn’t find a copy of the first, and I really, really wanted to read it). And yeah, there was a lot of odd stuff mentioned that I figured had happened in the first book, but I was never lost, per se.
There is, however, the whole “no one will buy a trilogy from an unknown author” problem. Well, Shades is just going to be one of those difficult stories, isn’t it? It’s either too long for its intended audience, or it’s a trilogy. Both situations compound the already inherent difficulty of breaking into the publishing industry. Right now, I honestly think that Shades is compelling enough to sell as a trilogy….and I think it has a better chance of being read as three average-length books than it does as one uber-long book. And this way, I can start pitching Book 1 to agents sooner rather than later. The first draft is pretty much written, and rewriting (while taking longer than I would like) does not take me as long as writing. I’m also hoping that the latter sections of the story won’t need full rewrites…just trimming and polishing.
And meanwhile, I can start working on Mask of Eldarmarch and Dragon Singer. I’m actually more enthused about Dragon Singer right now…Mask is such an easy, straighforward story, and most of it is already pretty well thought out, that my adventuresome writer’s bone is going “meh”. But it’s a solid story, and it raises some interesting questions about loyalty, trust, and love. I’m sure I’ll get more excited once I reacquaint myself with the material (it happened with Shades, heh).
I even picked a starting place for Dragon Singer and started writing the other day, just a few paragraphs. Got Rane, Zeke (his griffin), and Avie all on paper (Avie = A.V. = “audio-visual”…she’s in charge of all the speaker equipment). In just a few lines of dialogue, Rane has established himself as careful, methodical, and someone who sticks to the rules. Within that context, however, he’s an extraordinarily brave individual (tell him to go face a dragon and he will, without hesitation…but only after he’s double and triple-checked his griffin saddle-strap). I can already sense the shape of Rane’s internal journey. His personality is easy-going, and his soul is wide open to the world…Rane doesn’t have anything to hide, and he probably isn’t very good at hiding things anyway. I’ll bet he’s a horrible liar, which will make his eventual goal to bring down F.a.N.G down all the harder for him. (This will immediately separate Dragon Singer from Prison Break, where the Corrupt Corporation plotline was lifted from. Michael Scofield was also one of those heart of gold guys, but he had such a closed, mysterious air that you never really knew WHAT he was thinking about). It will be interesting to see how Miriam does on paper, because she’s a whole lot more secretive in general, and she’s walking into this story with skeletons in her closet.
It just means they’re a good match for each other.
Over the next few days, I’m going to be working on the conference program like a madwoman. Most of the layout and artwork is basically going to be lifted from the registration bulletin I did, so it won’t be so bad. Just plugging in new content.
I also will be working on a pitch for Shades…which I’ve got to rethink, now that I’m going to split it. The first three sentences from my Writing Projects page will probably do well enough for a Book 1 pitch…maybe alter the last line to mention the portal form.
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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