On story pirates...

Well. 's been a while, no?

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Every so often, a character swaggers, fully formed, onto the page and demands to have the story revolve around them. I've had it happen several times with several different characters, the latest of whom are running rampart through my hedgehog project, upsetting all of my original idea's plans, but leaving a much more coherent and interesting story in their wake.

It's funny how this can work sometimes. In the most particularly egregious example, a background character I needed for one tiny subplot ended up getting his own entire novel for NaNo. Yes, my leading man Red started as a walk-on who popped into my head completely fully-formed. He came in with motivation, character description and everything. The only thing that really changed from beginning to end was his role in the story and how he acted in it. While his motivation remained the same, he acted a bit different in several different drafts as how I treated him changed.

It's pretty cool sometimes when it all comes together like that with seemingly no effort on the writer's part. It's like having all the work done for you as this character provides you with a blueprint for everyone else in the interactions between the cast members. Other times, it can be a nightmare as it begins to shift everything around for better or for worse.

Because this can be a not-good thing. Dangers of Mary-Sue-dom abound, as does losing sight of the original story. When one strong character begins to shift all the other character interpretations really quickly, it can show how weak the other characters already were and that can throw you into despair. I know it does me occasionally, as I bang on the keyboard in frustration as each new acquisition to the cast seems far more interesting than all of the originals. Then I wonder why bother with the originals if the new guys are so much stronger and more interesting, but then I remember what made me love the original so much that I would want to write it at all and I get all flustered.

For right now though, I'm still infatuated with these new characters. Two of them this time, they suddenly are giving me long-term goals in the story and background stories to explore in the present action and even shifted the dynamics of the cast around enough that I have new relationships to explore that I think are far more interesting than what was there before. Time will tell if this is true, but for now, I'm happy.

In terms of discussion: has anyone else ever had one of these story pirates as well? Also, does anyone else have another name for them other than "story pirates"? Because they are like pirates, in how they catch you unawares and take control of the reins, but c'mon, there has to be a snazzier title somewhere.

Editing be my bane...

Gah, editing is bringing back into full view how slow the pace of my first few chapter. *sigh* It was pretty slow.

Yeah... Reeally slow... So the problem is to figure out how to get the information in those chapters (which is fairly important to Red and Quina's relationship) into the second draft without being so mind-numbingly boring.

Anyway, also started writing out a monologue/prologue-type thing based on a burst of inspiration from Pitch Black (seriously, I've watched this movie like three or four times in the past few days... it's not the greatest movie I've ever seen, but for some reason I really like it... brain mush?) and actually have an idea for it, but I feel guilty coming up with it when I'm supposed to be editing.

Blargh...

It's not you, outline, it's me...

I realized why it is that I don’t like writing with outlines. When I outline, I write down the high points that I want to happen, along with perhaps a quick explanation as to what leads up to this point. An excerpt from my second draft planning for Scorpion and Sandman :

Next day, Red brings Leon into the ring

            Her POV: she had thought she understood what he wanted, but now she isn’t sure again and just watches

            His POV: is using Leon to vent as much as any teaching he is attempting (Red and Leon’s comradary)

The problem is that I have difficulty writing between the high points. When I write seat-of-my-pants (as I do in first drafts always), the high points come out of whatever the characters are doing at the moment. Their interactions lead me onto other interactions, which pave the way for events. However, when I try to make that work out from high point to high point as in one of my outlines, it ends up feeling forced.

It’s a major epiphany for me, this realization. It explains my loathing of outlines, which had previously been something of a mystery for me.

Exposition

I am a writer.

This blog is the ongoing saga of my writing experiences and thoughts, most centrally focused at the moment on my novel-in-the-works: Scorpion and Sandman.

Scorpion and Sandman's two main characters, Quina and Red, actually started out as two of many characters in another novel project, Ocean of Fire, that I had started when I was around 14. That project, which I labored over for several years, has finally been put to rest, at least in that incarnation. But I loved the characters so much that I didn't want to let them die. I just didn't have a place for them.

Then National Novel Writing Month, 2009, rolled around. I wanted to join, but I didn't know what to write about. Then I remembered Quina and Red, my two favorite characters from the doomed Ocean of Fire, and decided to write their story as a full-length novel for NaNoWriMo.

30 days and 69,000+ words later, I had a manuscript in my hand. It was beautiful, but it was also horrible. Editing was the order of the day.

And so I began editing and have been editing since. It's not as steady an effort as I would like, but it is coming along nicely, despite competing with other projects in the works as well.

Welcome to the blog of a writer.