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Richard Watt

Monthly Archives: November 2011

Structurally unsound

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Richard

The classical 3 act structure, as explained by many people (I first came across it in a book by Alan Alda) goes something like this:

  • Chase your hero up a tree
  • Throw rocks at him
  • Get him down from the tree
This book does, neatly, divide into 3 acts.  And I think I can safely claim that Act 1 does, indeed, chase my hero (he’s more of a Protagonist, but we’ll let that slide) up a tree.  Thing is, I read too many books by people like John Barth, who like to monkey with the structure of things, so my first act is told in two parallel time streams (“Don’t cross the streams!”).  This, in the opinion of those who have read this far, is not at all a bad thing; it serves to move plot along, and illustrates the characters of my present day stream without stopping to do lots of what Mark Kermode likes to call ‘Basil exposition’.

But then:  Act 2 goes back over old ground by (as I think I mentioned) telling the story of the ‘past’ stream again, from the point of view of another, so far minor, character.  At great length.  I have a structure diagram somewhere which illustrates the problem nicely:  in Act 1, the narrative skips merrily between the present and the past, with (I like to think) some neat foreshadowing and dramatic irony going on; the structure diagram looks prettily mosaiced (if such a word exists, and if it does not, it should) and has a flow.  And then there’s a gigantic chunk, almost as long again as the book so far, which is all in the past.  This, plainly, does not work.  I did, on the third rewrite, hack this part in two, and put some present day stuff in the middle, but it’s a bit of a band-aid for a broken leg situation.

I think I know what I need to do, and it might turn out to be quite radical.  The trouble is, Act 2 doesn’t have much, if any, rock-throwing in it.  If anything, once it gets past the Enormous Flashback of Doom, it’s quite sweet and verges on the romantic.  It also flashes back several more times, but this time with more of a purpose; it’s telling the next part of the flashback, which does complicate things for all the characters.  What I need to do is to throw out Act 2 altogether, read it from beginning to end with no middle, and see what’s missing and therefore must go back in.  If what goes back in also serves to complicate the situation for my protagonist, so much the better.
I’m a little scared to pick up my copy of this:

Weekend Novelist

I am fairly sure that the whole Weekend Novelist approach doesn’t cover ‘junking a third of what you’ve written, and starting again’.  What I am going to do, however, is to find some of the exercises in it and do them – on browsing through it, I noticed a neat little exercise about telling the story of what your main characters were doing an hour, a day, a week, and so on before the story opens.  I wonder if giving that a bash might shed some light on things?  Since none of that is likely to be in the finished work, I might even post the results up here.
So, I apologise – this is a bit of a ramble, because I’m putting off the task of doing some actual rewriting.  I will say that I’ve re-read a good chunk of Going Back, and I still like it and want it to work, and I have had some ideas which might do the trick.  Next post will have some new content – there’s a challenge for me!

Posted in Work in Progress, Writing |

Meanwhile…

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Richard

This popped up in my Twitter feed this afternoon, just as I was contemplating doing some actual writing.  As I said yesterday, right now for ‘writing’ substitute ‘reading’; I really need to get back under the skin of the story before I start trying to change it.

 

But I worry.  I worry that I am wasting time, that I need to be getting on with it, that if I want to be a ‘writer’, I need to stop wasting time.  So thank you to Betsy Morais and The Atlantic for reminding me that it’s OK to work at your own pace, and it’s definitely OK not to start until you have some life under your belt.

 

The best advice I ever had about being a writer – and I’m afraid I can’t remember who said it to me – was “if you want to be a writer, write.”  And over the last few years, I have tried to follow that advice.  When people ask me what I do, I still talk about my other jobs, my ‘real’ jobs, but I more often than not admit to being a writer.  I think it’s important to feel that what I do is a real thing, with a real purpose to it.  And a real end prodict, which is where my promise of yesterday comes in.

 

An excerpt, I blithely promised.  So far this afternoon, I’ve spent time sifting through the book as it stands, looking for something representative, and wondering how on earth I’m supposed to define ‘representative’.  And, you know what?  I got caught up in the story again, and started reading it as if it was a book.  This, my friends, is a good thing.  But I’m no nearer to identifying a representative sample than I was before 5 boys came home from school and turned this place into a madhouse.

 

No, only 2 of the boys are mine.

 

So, instead, I’m going to muse on not how to write, but when.  Every writer does it differently – some rise early, and do nothing else until they have completed their allotted number of words; some write whenever they have a spare moment, or like M. Jenni, are ‘Sunday writers’.  I’ve tried all of the above, and, honestly, they all work to some degree, but I seem to write best in the evenings.  I need quiet, but not silence – I don’t mind the cats shouting around the house, as long as they’re not doing it in my office, and I prefer to have orchestral music on in the background.  Then I can shut the door and just let the story go where it will.  Music with words doesn’t work; I always want to sing along, and no-one needs to hear that.  Total silence also just feels wrong; I probably spend too much time trying to hear what’s going on elsewhere, or am distracted by something outside. So, it’s usually Shostakovich or Mahler, less often Bruckner or Sibelius.  If I need to be shaken out of a rut, Messiaen or Bartok often does the trick.

 

And then I got to wondering – can I tell what I was listening to as I wrote what I’m reading?  Well, in some cases, I think I can – there’s a piece in Part 3, for instance, which was obviously written under the spell of the magnificent final movement of Mahler’s Ninth…

 

And there I have it: extract no. 1 is a clear illustration of how the music I’m listening to creeps into the story almost unnoticed.  It’s also a pivotal, if underplayed, scene – the relationship between these two characters changes subtly but permanently as a result of what happens here:

 

Going Back: an extract from Part 3:

 

Clare asked him to put the music back on – “I’m calm now, and I’d like to know about the music which makes you cry, if you don’t mind.”  Andrew had to think about it for a minute, then remembered that it was the Mahler, which he felt spoke for itself.  He explained a little about it anyway, and wondered idly how long it would take him to drive to Meiernigg  – a place he had always wanted to see – from here.  If things get really bad, he thought, I can just escape there.

The music soothed and calmed him, without making him too emotional.  He tried to explain that it had less emotional force for him if it was divorced from the rest of the symphony, but Clare shushed him – she was listening intently, and he smiled to see it.

They arrived in Hohenügel shortly before the end of the movement, and Clare pulled the car over to the side of the road as they left the autobahn so that they could hear the end of it.  She took several deep breaths once it was done, then turned and smiled at him.  “I may have to revise my opinion of a few things,” she said.  “I never quite saw the point of all that classical stuff, but I may be getting the general idea.  Jesus, that was sad, wasn’t it?”

Andrew rarely needed an invitation to gush about music, and he gently disagreed with her.  “On the surface, it is, yes.  He’s dying, and he knows it.  It is a lingering farewell, but it’s also a statement of defiance and intent.  I always hear it as the musical equivalent of ‘rage against the dying of the light’.  I do find it can reduce me to tears if I’m not careful, but I can also find it enormously uplifting if I’m in the right mood.”

“Which is it today?”

“I’m not sure; I never quite engaged with it – too much else on my mind, I suppose – but it has calmed me and I think I may be ready for whatever might be coming.”

“Well, you’d better be, big guy, because it’s coming, like it or not.”

 

OK, I’m officially scared now – some part of my book is out there in the public domain.  Please trat it kindly, won’t you?

 

Posted in Work in Progress, Writing |

Today

Posted on November 24, 2011 by Richard

Today is the first day of the rest of my book.

2 years is a little more of a hiatus than I had planned, but having divested myself of my soccer responsibilities last night, I’m free now to wield keyboard in anger again.  Well, not so much anger; more bemusement, really, as I try to remember where I was, and what I was trying to say.  If you’re unaware of Going Back, have a quick look at the About page for a little more information.

At this point, the situation is:

  • I have a third draft of a novel
  • It’s almost 150,000 words long
  • I’m reasonably happy with large chunks of it
  • Part 1, in particular, has a pleasing logic to it, and builds nicely to the kind of climax that parts of books are supposed to build to.
  • Part 3 is also not too shabby, although there are flabby bits in it.  I like my ending (which is encouraging), and I think it resolves fairly well, although I’m aware that the point I was heading towards in my first concept isn’t very well dealt with, and I need to restructure some critical bits in the last 20 pages or so, because a couple of my characters are a little wobbly in there, and maybe I’m trying too hard to tie things up too neatly.  It’s not that kind of story…
  • Part 2 is, I’m afraid, a mess.  Which is a shame, because it contains some of the best bits of writing in the whole thing, and some really pleasing character development.  It is, however, way (and I mean waaaaay) too long, and spends a large amount of time retelling the events of Part 1 from the POV of another character.  Which I’d still really like it to do, but perhaps not quite the way it does now.
  • Part 2 also has a central implausibility, which I’d really like to keep, but I’m worried that it’s there because I am in love with the last line of Part 1.
What now?  Well, I need to read it again, and I need to have other people (ulp) read at least some of it (Part 1 is available as a pdf for the brave, but I don’t know if I should advertise that too widely).  I’d like to keep this blog, and the associated social media postings as a way of getting word out there about it.  Out where?  Well, I’m really not sure at this point.  More on this in the future, I think.
I also intend to break into a book by the Weekend Novelist which I have had sitting on my desk for – funnily enough – two years.  It’s about rewriting the novel, and I’m fairly sure that’s the point I’m at right now.  In my dream world, I’m going to apply the advice (or ignore it, as appropriate), and blog about how it’s going in here.  In reality, this blog may turn into something else entirely, but I do hope not.
So: a book.  A task.  A blog.  Will it work?  I hope so…
Next time:  a sample or two, to test the waters.

 

Posted in Work in Progress |

Richard Watt

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