Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 1
Total Queries: 9
Scenes Arranged: 0
Total Scenes: 216
It’s been a quiet few days on the “drawing” front as we’ve been celebrating my birthday. Then last night I got sick and am not 100% yet. Things will pick up today if I start feeling better, but for now I’m taking it slow.
Filling the Well
That Hideous Strength: 100%! (Book 15 of 25 for #ProjectBookworm2019)
Elegy: Page 46 of 89
I’m happy that I made some progress here. I’m even more happy to have That Hideous Strength behind me. That book was not for me even after reading the first two books in the series. To me, this book was radically different and I neither was engaged nor understood the ending. Basically, I’m glad it’s over. Elegy is action-packed, it’s just a slower read because of the formatting. Were it formatted for Kindle (rather than reading the .pdf ON my Kindle) it would probably be twice the length. I am, however, stoked to start listening to The Devouring Gray.
Polishing the Well
Yesterday was my 35th birthday and it was a chill and cool as the cool cat above. I worked all day, but I got to relax with my wife in the evening and it was great. Now, back to the grind.
Well Chat
How far do you take things?
Something I struggle with in both writing and reading is plot complexity. The more complex a plot is, the more you have to think about it, obviously. There’s only so much my brain can personally do when I’m reading. It takes some neural processing power just to take the words in and digest them. To then take that further and follow the plot obviously takes more. At some point, I hit my thinking asymptote and my thoughts say “Peace out.”
How does this translate to my writing? Well, it’s complicated. I want a winding plot with secrets and their inevitable reveals. I want an ever-branching, ever-burgeoning story. I want the world to feel bigger as the story progresses, especially in a series. But there’s only so many things I can hold in my head at a time PLUS I harbor a fear of forgetting things and looking like the fraud/impostor I often feel like I am.
This became apparent recently as my wife and I have been watching Lost. She watched it YEARS ago, but I’ve never seen it. Last night especially as the Season 3 finale approached, there were several different storylines progressing simultaneously. This has been the case throughout the series, but it became obvious to me how each episode was focusing on just one or two so really several episodes were happening simultaneously even though we weren’t watching them simultaneously. Because of that, I had the thought “What about Kate and Sawyer and what’s going on there?” In the middle of Jack, Juliet, and Sayid figuring out a final plan to lead into the finale. That’s the challenge of balancing a complex, complicated plot.
So what’s my recommendation? How do I handle this desire for a complex plot but the need to understand it?
I follow the same advice that I apply to most things in writing: I write the story that I know is for me, the story I would want to read. Granted, Book Two in my (hopeful) series is far more complex than Book One. I’ve had more time to develop both it and the characters, major events are driving my characters (my head-friends) to new accomplishments and goals, and they all have to grow to prepare for the True Awesome Moments at the end of the series. It’s still enough for me to follow. That is probably too simple for some people, but no one book is designed for all people. I write for me. You should write for you too.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG