You may have noticed that I haven't been blogging about Darkness, Oklahoma much. That's because I'm in trouble with it and haven't written my way out. I do know one thing that will become a rule for me: DON'T CREATE A CHARACTER TO FIX A PROBLEM.
Here's what happened. I have a lot of people in the book who all have pieces of the puzzle. These people need to get together so that they can exchange information. The problem is that many of these people have never even met. I need, in a sense, a town meeting where our heroes can talk to each other.
So … to fix this, I created a character. A sort of wise man. A player to move all the game pieces. My heroes would all get together because he would get them all together. I wanted him to be quirky and interesting. Wise and funny. Something out of the ordinary run-of-the-mill sages that seem to populate various fantasy books.
However, this new character created a whole bunch of problems. Why was he withholding information? Why not gather everybody together at first and send them off to do what has to be done? Why play games when so much is at stake?
Oh, okay, I'll fix that. There'll be a prophecy so that things have to be done in a particular order. But who will give the prophecy? Oh, I know, I'll create an ancient prophet and an ancient, powerful society. But if they were so powerful, why aren't they still around? Okay, there was a war or maybe the gods stuck them down for their pride. Ahem. Recognize the plot yet? If you read much fantasy, you do. And all of this came about just so I could get my heroes together. Which, by the way, still hasn't happened.
I knew then what I had to do. The wise man had to go. I'd lose nearly 7,000 words, but he had to go. The prophecy stayed but in a much reduced and mysterious form. The ancient prophet and the ancient society, gone.
I felt ill as I removed the wordage. I still feel a bit queasy. I saved the character in a different file. He had some cool quirks. Maybe I can use him in some other story someday.
Anyway, that didn't fix the original problem, but at least I don't have all the new problems. Somehow these folks are going to share info. I don't know how yet, but it's going to happen one way or another. I hope you'll be reading the solution soon.
5 comments:
I'm always fascinated when you share the writing process with us. It's a different world than most of us suppose. I can't pick up a book now without realizing that it's the product of someone's sweat and time.
Speaking of your problem, and this is probably stupid, but why not a town meeting? Many towns call a meeting when problems rise. Or maybe there's a chain of connection between the characters. One character knows another character who knows another, and they could share information that way.
However you work it out, I'm looking forward to reading Darkhess, Oklahoma. :)
Sweat and time is right! :)
I've been toying with the "chain of connection" idea. That's a neat way of putting it.
lol, Tech.
I don't have any suggestions for you. I'd have to read the whole thing and I really don't have time right now to do a novel-length crit.
I have faith that you'll figure it out, though. :)
Linda
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Linda. :) Eventually I'll write my way out of this. I'm just hoping I don't waste a lot of words before I find the solution.
Well, if I thought I could get it published that way, I might just wrap it all up as fast I could! But I think it will take my best work.
Post a Comment