![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Mar. 5th, 2011 08:58 amI've been working myself around back to rewriting Trace, which has taken a while; my pattern for writing seems to be "write furiously, post and edit in situ furiously, finish posting, ignore story for between two months and four years."
Trying to break that.
Anyway, I'm wrestling with the front of Trace because there is a lot of loaded up backstory to these characters. It's by necessity for two reasons: one, yeah, okay, it's a fanfic, these characters came with a history. And if that were all, I could ditch the backstory. But two, a lot of this backstory is integral to the function of the plot. I can't just pretend that there's no prior relationship between Joseph and Colin, because half the story is about Colin watching Joseph's shade become a physical presence outside of him, and Joseph seeing what happens to Colin on the inside where he's more magical than not, as opposed to on the outside where Colin's magic can be written off as "he's kind of weird". And I can't go easier on the politics from Colin's last stay at Railburg, because Noel and Colin need that bedrock to stand on for their intimacy to work.
IN ESSENCE I HAVE SCREWED MYSELF.
I can take out the sex, but that's frankly not going to solve the overall problem. Originally I was just going to write a chapter introducing the backstory, starting with Joseph rescuing Colin from Hoboken, but I wrote it and a) it's clumsy and b) it's kind of obvious and c) if I'm going that route I really should just write the god damned prequel, and that's so much work.
So the goal now is "be a better writer" and work the backstory into the text in a way that is not confusing and not obvious. Which is nice, that something which started as a fanfic is now about to push me out of my comfort zone. (Talking of comfort zones, I stumbled over a very nice review of Nameless the other night, and it made me re-read a couple of chunks of the book. Tell you what, that book didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it did.) Apparently Douglas Adams did this a lot by deliberately writing himself into a corner so I'm just going to go with "I'm pretending I'm Douglas Adams".
There's no real reason to tell you guys all this except that you're way cheaper than a therapist and I don't have an editor. And also I wanted to make a post to let you all know about a coupon deal, and this is the post my brain decided to make.
So. HEY GUYS THERE'S A COUPON DEAL. From now until Monday, enter GIANT305 at checkout to get 20% all books at Lulu.com. These include my books! Just in case you needed any ideas....
Trying to break that.
Anyway, I'm wrestling with the front of Trace because there is a lot of loaded up backstory to these characters. It's by necessity for two reasons: one, yeah, okay, it's a fanfic, these characters came with a history. And if that were all, I could ditch the backstory. But two, a lot of this backstory is integral to the function of the plot. I can't just pretend that there's no prior relationship between Joseph and Colin, because half the story is about Colin watching Joseph's shade become a physical presence outside of him, and Joseph seeing what happens to Colin on the inside where he's more magical than not, as opposed to on the outside where Colin's magic can be written off as "he's kind of weird". And I can't go easier on the politics from Colin's last stay at Railburg, because Noel and Colin need that bedrock to stand on for their intimacy to work.
IN ESSENCE I HAVE SCREWED MYSELF.
I can take out the sex, but that's frankly not going to solve the overall problem. Originally I was just going to write a chapter introducing the backstory, starting with Joseph rescuing Colin from Hoboken, but I wrote it and a) it's clumsy and b) it's kind of obvious and c) if I'm going that route I really should just write the god damned prequel, and that's so much work.
So the goal now is "be a better writer" and work the backstory into the text in a way that is not confusing and not obvious. Which is nice, that something which started as a fanfic is now about to push me out of my comfort zone. (Talking of comfort zones, I stumbled over a very nice review of Nameless the other night, and it made me re-read a couple of chunks of the book. Tell you what, that book didn't suck nearly as much as I thought it did.) Apparently Douglas Adams did this a lot by deliberately writing himself into a corner so I'm just going to go with "I'm pretending I'm Douglas Adams".
There's no real reason to tell you guys all this except that you're way cheaper than a therapist and I don't have an editor. And also I wanted to make a post to let you all know about a coupon deal, and this is the post my brain decided to make.
So. HEY GUYS THERE'S A COUPON DEAL. From now until Monday, enter GIANT305 at checkout to get 20% all books at Lulu.com. These include my books! Just in case you needed any ideas....
