Losing your voice...

The one of the worst parts about leaving a project alone for too long is losing the voice you had for the characters.

When I'm constantly working on a project, the voice just seems to flow. All the prose fits together and it feels like it all belongs to the same story. Or at least it's not too disjointed.

But sometimes, when I leave off for a few days or a few weeks and come back, it takes time to get back with the voice of the story. I have to read over what I've already written and try to continue from there. But even then, there is often a lag between where I left off and where the voice comes back correctly.

It also doesn't help if I read something with a very distinctive voice in the interlude between writing. It tends to affect my voice when I pick my writing back up.

Writing again...

My editing isn't going as smoothly as I wanted and I've been distracted by other writing projects, but at least that means I'm writing again, which is good.

So, based on that recent phase I went through with Pitch Black, I started scribbling with a character history in mind, tentatively calling the whole thing "Jail Bird".

Yet, this project seems to be expanding without my consent. After having just brainstormed for a bit on that particular idea, I found a prompt on the Cool Bits generator and decided to try and hash out a short story. Thing is, the short story idea that popped into my head is the perfect companion story to "Jail Bird", as sort of an in-between-quel. And it could stand alone because it involves a character who leaves "Jail Bird" for a time and none of the events really tie back into the main story beyond containing some of the main characters. Basically, it's that character's exploits in the period between rejoining "Jail Bird".

So the question is: should I try to write both of these pieces at once? I am sorely tempted. I want to be writing again. I guess I'll take a stab at it and see how it turns out, no?

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...

Narration, narration, narration...

I love Terminator 2. It's seriously one of my favorite movies. Oh I whine and gripe about it all the time; from the acting to the time travel, I've probably complained about it at least once to my family members, who usually just nod their heads sympathetically and wonder why on earth I had to be related to them. But I do genuinely like the movie.

One of the things I like the most about it is how it does something correctly that so many movies do wrong: opening and closing narration. The movie opens with Sarah Connor narrating the history of things that have been and those that have yet to come. It ends with her acknowledging that she no longer knows what's going to happen in the future anymore. The two narrations play off each other and relate to one another and the theme of the movie, effectively bookending the film. It's quite lovely. And there's even a moment or two of narration within the body of the movie itself!

There are far too many movies out there that have opening narration, but then seem to forget it in the end. Granted, a lot of times, the narration is just to get the viewer up to speed on whatever happened in the past so they can enjoy the movie without having to see all the history leading up to the events of the movie (for example: The Dark Crystal). After the movie, the viewers are usually left to draw their own conclusions about what comes after, or it's being shown on screen and how lame is it to have something narrated to you as you are watching it happen? Pretty lame and usually completely unnecessary. I mean, in the beginning, you haven't seen any of these people or places or events before, so an introduction can be nice. By the end, however, you've been following these events for two hours and you are fairly familar with what is going down. A narrative can feel redundant unless done correctly.

But a movie done with narration in the beginning and none in the end feels so lopsided to me. I just watched Pitch Black recently (and actually enjoyed it more after the second or third watching than I did the first) and there is this great noir-type narration in the beginning by Riddick that isn't followed through anywhere else in the film. It's great narration, but the more I look at it, the less it fits with the portrayal of the character anywhere else in the film. He's an enigma in the film, both the villain and something of a hero, and you never really know what he is thinking. It's part of what makes him so badass. The narration gets you inside his head. It's badass as well, but a different tone of badass. The more I watch it, the less it seems to gel with the rest of the movie. And, to make matters worse, it is never reprised anywhere.

Yeah, it bothers me. If you have narration at the beginning of your film (this is more of a film trope in my experience), then at least try to reprise it or follow it up somehow in the end of the film. It just makes the whole experience that much more balanced. And if you can't do that, can you try doing it without narration at all? And if you can't do that, at least get someone like David Odgen Stiers to do your narration (like in Beauty and the Beast).

Blood and flashbacks…

Last night I had an epiphany as to a potential opening for my second draft of Scorpion and Sandman. I started it and I am really happy. Basically, in order to skip the more tedious parts of the beginning, I'm going to begin later in the story and just have a bit of a flashback as to what their relationship has grown from. Thing is, I'm not quite sure how to do the flashback. I could either 1) do it as a separate part of the prose, but then I'm not sure how to distinguish it clearly with two point of views already being introduced on the first page, or I could 2) do it as flashbacks within each of their POVs in italics. I think the second is my best course of action right now, but we'll see how it goes, shall we not?

 

Also, I'm doing my seat-of-the-pants writing again for the second draft, all because I was able to throw some blood in right away. Seriously, I'm literally throwing blood. Or at least Red is. It's pretty awesome. Suddenly I have character chemistry again, which I just wasn't feeling in some other test scribbles for the second draft. I feel so happy about this right now! *squee*

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.

Editings: I does them...

Note unrelated to anything but which, in my foolish way, I thought was funny: Greg House is rather angsty and troubled, pushing everyone away (though you wouldn't know it from that picture, wouldja?). Years before House ever existed, I wrote a character named Greg who was rather angsty and troubled, pushing everyone away. Just the fact that they have the same name tickled me a bit.

Anyhoo, onto what I actually was going to talk about:

Editing! I've been sitting on the roots of Scorpion and Sandman for at least six or seven years and the actual manuscript since November of 2008 (NaNo! *whoot*) and I've been meaning to edit and have made several short-lived attempts at editing, but they have sort of been gathered together and ignored. Well, I dug them out and intend to actually try hardcore editing.

Now, my style of editing is very often rewriting at least once, followed by tweaking and whatnot. Mainly a lot of wordy parts need to be fixed in Scorpion and Sandman because of it's NaNo origins. That and some loose threads that go nowhere (though S&S was much better about tying everything together than Dirt Queen was... I read DQ recently and *shudder*... the plot holes...) lead to having to carve up some parts of the story.

Anyway, I started rewriting some beginning drivel. I cut at least two or three chapters from the beginning and am basically going to begin when Quina and Red first meet, rather than anything beforehand. In fact, I'm actually starting in-between their first and second meetings, but Quina doesn't recall the first one. Red does though and refers to it, so I'm hoping it will be intriguingly confusing at the beginning and smooth itself out by the end.

My scribbles thus far (written in math class, I might add) which probably will need editing to make pretty, but are just concerned with story now:

The light burned at her eyes, too bright after her having been in the dark so long. It blinded her and she stumbled along behind the hands that gripped her arms on either side as her eyes frantically worked to cope with the sudden stabbing rays of light. The grips on her arms pinched painfully and the force with which they pulled was inexorable. She tried to backpedal with her feet, trying to slow or reverse, but the hands merely jerked her along. So all she could do was squint against the light and try to avoid tripping as she was pulled along.

When the hands finally released her, she stood and blinked. Blue spots danced before her, but around them, she coudl see a broad expanse of red. It swayed beyond the blue spots and she staggered a little, teary-eyed and squinting. Finally the red resolved itself into a fenced ring of red dirt.

-o-o-o-

Red eyed her as the handlers shoved her into the ring. She reeled drunkenly and blinked at the ring, but she seemed even less alert than the first time she had come. She just stood and blinked.

I dunno... I'm working on things. Having read Spunk and Bite recently, I feel as if my writing is woefully inadequately clever. But I ascribe to solidness of story achieved first and then prettiness of prose. I just need to get the story hashed out on paper first and then things will improve, methinks.