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pameladeanI keep forgetting to make any notes about this, either. I'm still laboring away on Chapter Three. I seem able to do about two or three hundred words a day, and don't reliably do more if I schedule more times for staring at the computer. This is okay for the moment, though things will have to speed up soon. Raphael has read the book chapter by chapter; Eric is reading it in smaller rougher bits, which is very useful to my decayed confidence; and David and Lydy, plus people not in my household, will read the entire thing when there is one, a matter -- the existence of a finished book, that is -- that I am more confident about now than I was a month ago.
I'm most pleased about the way that lines from invented plays do come to mind when they are needed, although the tendency of the characters to sneer at some of them is probably going to have to be damped down at some point.
I'm a little worried that the number of viewpoint characters is going to multiply uncontrollably. My last three books were all tight-third, one viewpoint, so using three different ones for this book seemed quite a stretch. I have ended up with four already (a habit taken from my Liavek short stories; somebody I had not planned to use is somebody whose viewpoint I am very accustomed to using, and suddenly there it was, and I could not resist), and can dimly foresee a point in the plot where another two might be useful. Eeeeeep.
Pamela
I'm most pleased about the way that lines from invented plays do come to mind when they are needed, although the tendency of the characters to sneer at some of them is probably going to have to be damped down at some point.
I'm a little worried that the number of viewpoint characters is going to multiply uncontrollably. My last three books were all tight-third, one viewpoint, so using three different ones for this book seemed quite a stretch. I have ended up with four already (a habit taken from my Liavek short stories; somebody I had not planned to use is somebody whose viewpoint I am very accustomed to using, and suddenly there it was, and I could not resist), and can dimly foresee a point in the plot where another two might be useful. Eeeeeep.
Pamela
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Date: 2002-12-07 03:33 pm (UTC)200 words a day steadily soon adds up.
POV multiplication is weird. I think POV generally is one of those things where most of the ways of thinking about it come from literary criticism and therefore picking it up from the wrong end for writing. I hope you are soon happy with the way yours is working for you and for the story. POV overlaps a whole lot with a lot of mode stuff about where you're standing to tell the story and what assumptions you can make. I hope you have a lot of fun with it.
I'm finding omniscient really strange -- what's called omniscient is actually about six different things. I have a new theory about it, which is that there was an omniscient narrator voice, as used by Austen and Trollope, and Dickens picked it up, dropped and broke it, making his form of omniscient which developed into the detested Bestseller Omniscient as seen today.
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Date: 2002-12-07 06:48 pm (UTC)> Ooh, invented plays.
I cannot possibly tell you how weird and trepidatious I feel doing this. MIKE FORD did this.
I take great comfort in Sturgeon's Law, however, which I conceive to also apply in Liavek.
> 200 words a day steadily soon adds up.
Yes, it does. Experience suggests it will be more at some point, at least if somebody will kindly buy the damned book.
> POV multiplication is weird. I think POV
> generally is one of those things where most of > the ways of thinking about it come from
> literary criticism and therefore picking it up
> from the wrong end for writing.
It's one of the things I learned to do at some point while trying to learn other things, so frankly I have seldom let what writing guides say about it influence me one way or the other. At least, any given POV is like that. Their interactions and arrangement verge on structure, a place where I am notoriously weak.
> I'm finding omniscient really strange --
> what's called omniscient is actually about six
> different things. I have a new theory about it, > which is that there was an omniscient narrator > voice, as used by Austen and Trollope, and
> Dickens picked it up, dropped and broke it,
> making his form of omniscient which developed
> into the detested Bestseller Omniscient as seen
> today.
Oh dear, now I want to reread all that stuff. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt a bit.
How do you think the viewpoint of THE FALL OF THE KINGS fits into this? I'm pretty sure that my problems with that book, if not solely internal to my state of mind, have to do with viewpoint. I don't mean it isn't well done, because of course it is. However.
Pamela
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Date: 2002-12-08 07:10 am (UTC)I find structure to be one thing I can usefully plan, I'll sometimes know when I'll be having another chunk of a particular POV when I have no idea what'll be happening by then. This current novel has three (two and a half) strands and using POV as structure is the only way I can keep control of those bits of plot.
As for THE FALL OF THE KINGS, it's so beautifully written, and so good, that saying anything at all negative about it seems like carping, I mean this is a really good book. But I'd say what was weird about the POV, what could have led you to the glass curtain feeling, was a mode thing, where the author was standing with respect to those characters tended to be a whole lot more detached than one generally sees. I don't know if this was because of the number of POVs, or because it was a collaboration or if it was a finely judged intentional thing. It was beautiful, but it was reserved in an odd way.
My problem with that book -- and I emailed Delia about this -- was political. It seemed to me -- oh, SPOILERS, that what that country needed was clearly a constitutional monarchy, with a constitutional wizardry as well, to do the magic stuff and also to speak to the oligarchic council for the ordinary people -- Justin's father and wife and so on, for the king to have the magic link and speak for the ordinary people but not have power. But then, I live in a constitutional monarchy, this is something that Delia said never crossed her mind, doubtless because she lives in a Republic. But if you're talking about ritual kingship and your brain is wired for a Republic, you end up with what felt to me like an oddly pulled climax. I loved everyone turning into their animals. But something really skewed the plot and the structure after that.
Brilliant book. Very peculiar.
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Date: 2002-12-07 09:07 pm (UTC)B
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Date: 2002-12-07 11:01 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2002-12-08 07:47 am (UTC)B
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Date: 2002-12-08 09:52 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2002-12-08 09:54 am (UTC)B
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Date: 2002-12-09 02:07 pm (UTC)P.