cleolinda | Friday night, a break from gothic-lit reading (Reply)

So. Another backlog of linkspam, but what're you gonna do. After struggling all week in front of blank paper (what's that old line? "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood stand out on your forehead"?), I finally sat down today and decided to write out the story from the POV of three major(ish) characters whose storylines are giving me hives. I think one of the reasons Black Ribbon has become so hard for me is that there are suspense and mystery elements--what's happening? Who's doing it? Those people, what are they doing over there? TUNE IN TOMORROW--and I'm having a hard time sussing out everything that's supposed to be going on. Honestly, it's usually not this hard for me, but then again, I usually don't write things this complex, and I think that it being the first story in the series, given that I work from the big picture down, is part of the problem. I mean, I only wrote a page or two for each person, but it's like, what did she come here to do? What did she expect or hope to happen? And a couple of times I realized, this or that thing could only happen by sheer coincidence, which is total crap. And not even the good kind of narrative coincidence you can use to show the role of fate or whatever. Just sheer, lazy, narrative flab. So I started going through these characters and trying to figure out why they would want to be at this or that place at a certain time, what they were expecting to accomplish. And a lot of good ideas came out of this, is what I'm getting at.

I did go through a couple of days of despair where it seemed like I had this fantastic novel in my head on one hand and then on the other hand I had what I'd actually written, and suddenly I felt as if I was in over my head... really, really deep. I wrote out a basic outline of the story, one sentence per major scene ("Rose Hannah comes home, stranger is there. West goes to work. Rose and Camilla go somewhere that is not totally lame, fix that in revision"). There was one scene I liked, but I couldn't even figure out how the hell it related to the other two scenes around it--it was a rough order, but the logic of the conversation didn't seem to make any sense in context at all. And then I had these sequences in the first half that were kind of like, "Stuff happens, here's some ideas," but I just felt completely at sea. So writing a similar outline from the POV of those three characters helped--to continue an overly involved metaphor, it was a little like building a raft out of some shipwreck debris. I at least felt like I could keep my head up now. There's still some major When and What and Who and How issues, but at least now I don't feel too queasy to even contemplate them.

Also, since I'm in a Halloween mood--the most marvelous sentence in the history of the English, from John Stagg, "The Vampyre," The Minstrel of the North (1810): "It was then asserted, that, in several places, dead persons had been known to leave their graves, and, by night, to revisit the habitations of their friends; whom, by suckosity, they drained of their blood as they slept."

A sampling of my linkspam backlog:

The Bride Buyers: "A controversial Web site purporting to be a place for families to sell their teenage daughters as brides is revealed to be bogus. Wait till you see what the would-be grooms wrote in—and what states actually allow." This is the Marry Our Daughter site, by the way, if you heard about that in the last week or so. Turns out "[Ordover] says he was hired by a group of women from a local support group who'd been married out in similar fashions—and wanted to draw attention to a very real problem."

David Bowie donates to Jena 6 defense fund; Large crowd expected for 'Jena 6' rally in La; Louisiana Protest Echoes the Civil Rights Era (God, this headline makes me so sad); Jena attorney: No link between nooses, beating; 2 arrested in [new] noose incident near Jena; Teen in 'Jena 6' case denied bail.

'God' strikes back at lawsuit, claims immunity.

Students stunned, tired about Taser incident.

'Leave Britney alone' guy hoping for stardom.

Scientists: Velociraptor had feathers.

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