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bedlamsbardToo much going on in Dust. Crap. I just forgot the point I spent two chapters setting up, and now I have to figure out how to work that in with the situation as it stands now and without adding another chapter; I want to clear up the Cair Paravel arc with three chapters.
Which means that the crime lord meet and greet is going to have to be from someone else's POV, not Peter's; there's already a hell of a lot going on in Peter's. Unless I drop a certain point, or change it -- which -- okay, I'm not going to overlap the action in the chapters. That's a definite no. (The timeline, on the other hand, has been overlapped for a while now.) I could knock the Peter POV back a chapter and switch Dust 11 to a Susan POV and Dust 12 to a Peter POV (Dust 13 is supposed to be a Tirian, although in some respects I want to put Tirian in earlier because there's stuff happening, but on the other hand, the Cair Paravel arc is ending with a Tirian POV. Or a Eustace POV, but not a Peter or Susan POV -- I could, I just don't want to), but there are parts of the Peter POV that are chronologically earlier than where the Susan POV starts, and also I kind of like the tension of having the reader sit around for a chapter and wonder what happened to Susan.
Shit, these three chapters all take place at the exact same time with very, very minor differences. (Actually, I think the Tirian chapter may start the earliest but end the latest. Maybe if I do go ahead and go Peter, Tirian, Susan, Tirian again, but I don't want to stretch it out any longer.)
What to leave offscreen? What to put onscreen? What's logical?
I really, really don't want to split the POVs in a single chapter, because we're 75K in and if I do that, it's going to come out of nowhere. That's the most logical way to do it right now, but it will spoil the tone of the story: I refuse to have something that major come out of nowhere, and it's not necessary anywhere early on.
I think the easiest POV to drop, at this point, would be Peter's.
Or I could write all three chapters and then figure out how to order them. The slight problem here is that the average length of a chapter in Dust is 7.5K and lately they've been closer to the 8K-9K mark than the 6K mark. (Shortest chapter is Dust 2, an Edmund POV, with 5,592 words. Longest chapter is Dust 5, a Susan POV, with 9,742 words.) And that's a lot to write without posting. *prods carefully*
Okay. Step away from the fine print. What's the bigger picture? What's important in the process of retaking Narnia and winning the war? What's important thematically? How is that best going to be conveyed?
Do I need this chapter? What's the point of it, and how does it serve the bigger picture?
(INT. BEDLAM'S HEAD. In case y'all were wondering what it's like in here. Writing Dust is teaching me a hell of a lot about writing a novel.)
Which means that the crime lord meet and greet is going to have to be from someone else's POV, not Peter's; there's already a hell of a lot going on in Peter's. Unless I drop a certain point, or change it -- which -- okay, I'm not going to overlap the action in the chapters. That's a definite no. (The timeline, on the other hand, has been overlapped for a while now.) I could knock the Peter POV back a chapter and switch Dust 11 to a Susan POV and Dust 12 to a Peter POV (Dust 13 is supposed to be a Tirian, although in some respects I want to put Tirian in earlier because there's stuff happening, but on the other hand, the Cair Paravel arc is ending with a Tirian POV. Or a Eustace POV, but not a Peter or Susan POV -- I could, I just don't want to), but there are parts of the Peter POV that are chronologically earlier than where the Susan POV starts, and also I kind of like the tension of having the reader sit around for a chapter and wonder what happened to Susan.
Shit, these three chapters all take place at the exact same time with very, very minor differences. (Actually, I think the Tirian chapter may start the earliest but end the latest. Maybe if I do go ahead and go Peter, Tirian, Susan, Tirian again, but I don't want to stretch it out any longer.)
What to leave offscreen? What to put onscreen? What's logical?
I really, really don't want to split the POVs in a single chapter, because we're 75K in and if I do that, it's going to come out of nowhere. That's the most logical way to do it right now, but it will spoil the tone of the story: I refuse to have something that major come out of nowhere, and it's not necessary anywhere early on.
I think the easiest POV to drop, at this point, would be Peter's.
Or I could write all three chapters and then figure out how to order them. The slight problem here is that the average length of a chapter in Dust is 7.5K and lately they've been closer to the 8K-9K mark than the 6K mark. (Shortest chapter is Dust 2, an Edmund POV, with 5,592 words. Longest chapter is Dust 5, a Susan POV, with 9,742 words.) And that's a lot to write without posting. *prods carefully*
Okay. Step away from the fine print. What's the bigger picture? What's important in the process of retaking Narnia and winning the war? What's important thematically? How is that best going to be conveyed?
Do I need this chapter? What's the point of it, and how does it serve the bigger picture?
(INT. BEDLAM'S HEAD. In case y'all were wondering what it's like in here. Writing Dust is teaching me a hell of a lot about writing a novel.)
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Date: 2009-01-25 06:30 pm (UTC)Does this involve diagrams?
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Date: 2009-01-25 08:49 pm (UTC)