Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 0
Total Queries: 20
Rejections: 3
Scenes Mapped: 7
Total Scenes: 281
I’m getting in a bad habit of not sending as many queries as I want. I need to get back on that today. In Victoryland, though, I’m continuing to make progress on the mapping front for Book Two. It does, unfortunately, lead into today’s blog…
Filling the Well
1984: 8:51 – 77%
Bloodwitch: 5%
I finally got caught up on my YouTube playlist enough that I could spend some time listening to 1984 and WOW has it taken a turn. I’m so engrossed in this book right now and can’t wait to see how it ends. I’ll get back to Bloodwitch, but that’s going to be a slow grind as Truthwitch and Windwitch were.
Polishing the Well
Yesterday began a three-day renovation project. We got new carpet for our living room, had the loft stretched, and are getting new tile in the dining room and a loft cleaning before week’s end. Part of that was that we needed to paint the dining room. Well, last night, it happened. The color is actually a bit lighter en vivo than in this photo but it came out nicely. My hands and hips hurt but I’m a happy man. Now today we’ll get tile in there and the room will start to come back together.
Well Chat
The Dangers of Pantsing
Retcon stands for retroactive continuity. It’s something thrown in to make a scene make sense because the underlying reason didn’t exist before this moment. I ran into one yesterday so now I’ve got to go back and make sure that I seed it throughout the novel before this point AND make sure to revisit it after this point to make sure it is a part of the character and not a retcon.
But what’s the big deal? you might ask. Retcons aren’t that big of a deal.
Don’t say that to Redditt.
Retcons often infuriate fans because it feels like a violation, a cheat card used solely to make a cool scene make sense. Fans (readers in my case) know the characters they’re reading or watching. These characters become a part of the reader themselves so when a retcon pops up, readers are immediately able to spot it and say “This doesn’t make sense. Character X wouldn’t do that!” The biggest problem here is that the reader has been knocked out of the fantasy of reading and is now acutely aware that they ARE reading. You want your readers to be transported to another place, a place of your making. When you let them know they’re being transported in the process, you run the very real risk of them hopping off the train.
I only know how bad this is because I had to excise a retcon from Book One thanks to my editor (@JMWEditor who is lovely and provides great advice through her Twitter and Blog. She really is a wonderful person. Go check her out.) Now, in my head, this aspect of Aron’s personality had always been there, but on the page it was brand new in the scene that I needed it, so to the reader it was a retcon. In the end, I cut most of that part out and beefed up its mention earlier.
Where I am now, a character’s resistance to an idea leads to some growth from her and those around her, but its never been mentioned before. So I made myself a note to go back and sprinkle its mention into the earlier parts of Book Two. It was never mentioned in Book One and I’ll have to retcon THAT, unfortunately (unless I go for a Draft 8 where that’s all I add), but at least by the time it comes up it will feel mostly natural.
So how do you avoid retcons? For me, there are only two answers: planning or editing. Either you plan things out and identify where you have character backstory deficiencies or you go back and fix them. The biggest part of this comes down to IDENTIFYING that you have slipped in a retcon. That takes honesty and a hard look at your manuscript. You have to be brave to admit that you did something you don’t like, but it’s the only way to make the best story you can craft.
Be brave. Be direct. Iron out those kinks. Happy Tuesday.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG