Out, Damn'd Spot!

I've said often in these blog posts that I'm working on the rewrites to Ichor. That's... perhaps not quite as true as I may have made it out to be. I've reread the manuscript, and I've been doing some tweaking (like the changes to the first chapter I mentioned a few days ago), but haven't really started intensively rewriting it yet. Nor do I plan to before doing one more re-read, during which I intend to carefully tabulate the characters and timeline for reference when I do get around to the rewrites. (The crew of a ship makes up the entire cast, with one exception (a scholar who has paid for passage on the ship), and I want to make sure I'm consistent about the crew members' ranks and positions, who's on which shift, et cetera.) Even that second re-reading I haven't embarked on yet, because I have another project I want to finish first.

But while I haven't technically done much actual rewriting yet, Ichor has been prominently on my mind lately, and I've thought of things I want to incorporate in the rewrites. I mentioned in a previous post my thoughts about the protagonist's arc, and how I can highlight it further. Just now it's occurred to me that there's something else I can bring more to the fore during the rewrites: an underlying theme of guilt.

I didn't, when I started the novel, set out to have it be about guilt. And, well, maybe saying it's "about guilt" is going a little too far. But guilt is present as an underlying theme. (Heck, one important character's name comes from a Sanskrit word for guilt, though I don't expect many readers to pick up on that.) At the risk of a minor spoiler, guilt, in the end, turns out to have been responsible for the formation of the main villain. And there's a bit of foreshadowing about that. There are a few references to guilt—both of the gods, and of the mortals who hunt them—earlier in the novel. And—although this wasn't consciously intended to reinforce that theme, and I didn't actually think of the connection until just now—the arc of one secondary character is all about guilt. He's tempted to do something terrible, and feels guilty about even considering it... but then does go through with it anyway, and feels guilty about it afterward; when he's finally caught and forced to confess, the endless rationalizations he rattles off are just dripping with guilt. So, yes, guilt's already there in the story as something of a through-line.

But I can do more with it.

Oh, I don't plan on taking this too far and beating the reader over the head with it. But there are other places this theme could work into the story naturally. I'm thinking in particular of the protagonist. He has, at the outset of the novel, a very hazy memory of events from before he arrived on the ship; he's basically amnesiac. He remembers that he was a thief, but he doesn't remember exactly what he did, or what he stole.

There's plenty of opportunity for guilt there. Maybe he doesn't like the fact that he was a thief; maybe he's worried about what he stole or what he did. This could allow some interesting character exploration, and could work very well with later events in the story, such as when he asks another character to try to help him unlock his missing memories (maybe wanting to know the extent of his crimes is part of his motivation), or when, well into the novel, he finally tries to use his thieving abilities (maybe guilt-born reluctance is the reason he never tried to use them until then, and is something he has to overcome when he does finally use them then). And near the end of the novel when it turns out that he's apparently—well, heh, don't want to spoil too much here. But anyway, this could also lend another dimension to the protagonist's character arc I was concerned with in my earlier post.

Ooh... and it just occurred to me as I was writing this that that could potentially work in with another minor theme touched on with the villain near the end, about being able to resist a predetermined purpose. Hmm...

(For what it's worth, these thoughts were brought on at least in part by reading this old blog post from Arthur A. Levine, linked to from this post on Miss Snark's blog. (The connection may admittedly seem tangential at best, but I promise there was a train of thought that led, however circuitously, from that post to this one.) Yes, I'm still reading my way through the archives of Miss Snark's blog (and a few other writing-oriented blogs). Is there a more profitable way I could be spending my time (like actually writing)? Eh... maybe, but there's enough good stuff there that I'm certainly not wasting time reading it. Hey, for one thing, this reading has apparently given me some ideas of ways I can improve my novel...)

The Long and the Short of it

I seem to be inclined to update this blog at times when I really ought to be sleeping. Hm.

While at the moment I'm primarily concerned with polishing my novel, Ichor, I've also thought that I really ought to be working on writing some short stories. If I can get some of them published in reputable venues (admittedly rather a large if), it could (a) make me eligible to join the SFWA, (b) give me some credits I can list when querying my novel, and, of course, (c) make me a little money.

I've never really focused much on short stories. That's not to say I've never written any, but I've only finished a few, and those that I have finished I've only sent out to a handful of markets. And... looking back on my submission history, the last one I tried submitting was very nearly five and a half years ago. Hm. Yeah, I think it may be worth trying my hand at them again.

I've just looked over some of the short stories I've written, or started writing but not finished, though, and... huh. I don't know that I'm too thrilled with them. There are some unfinished ones that have potential, if I get them done, but I don't know if even they would really be highly marketable. (Which isn't going to stop me from trying... one I think would be perfect for Weird Tales, if not for the unfortunate fact that this august publication is currently undergoing a change in ownership and not accepting new submissions... though of course that may change by the time I finish the story.)

The thing is, though, short stories don't come as easy to me as novels. I like broad canvases and detailed plots, with plenty of time to explore characters. I have a hard time thinking of concepts I want to write short stories about. Though admittedly part of this may be because I don't spend much time actively trying to think of concepts I want to write short stories about.

It has recently occurred to me, however, that there is another possible factor contributing to my difficulty with short stories—a factor which, again, is in retrospect blindingly obvious. Said factor being that I haven't actually read all that many contemporary short stories. Oh, I've read some, certainly; I briefly had subscriptions to Asimov's and Analog, and I've read some issues of some other periodicals. But I've never been a big reader of short stories. So maybe it's not surprising I'm not terribly comfortable writing it.

While it's easy to say I ought to read more short stories, though, there's the little matter of periodicals costing money. If I had the money for it, sure, I'd subscribe again to Asimov's, and Analog, and Realms of Fantasy, and F&SF, and so on, and so forth. But money's very tight right now, tight enough that even the relatively small expenditure of subscriptions to those magazines could make the difference between being able or not to pay rent and put gas in my tank. So, while I know I probably ought to be reading more short fiction, at the moment I'm not in much of a position to do so. (On the other hand, I suppose I can see if there are any recent anthologies at the public library... that might be worth looking into.)

All that aside, I'm still going to try to finish and send out some short stories, in between working on the rewrites to Ichor (and all the other myriad projects I have going on). The worst that can happen is they'll be rejected. And that's something I ought to get used to anyway.

(Speaking of the SFWA, that's... interesting. The SFWA eligibility rules mention that a writer can also qualify by a "professionally produced full-length dramatic script". As it happens, I currently have an opportunity to write a low budget science-fiction feature screenplay for a group that will very likely produce it. Whether or not this would count for the SFWA guidelines, I'm not sure; the more detailed requirements only say vaguely that the production must have "credits acceptable to the Membership Committee." The group I'll be writing the screenplay for has some connections and has an excellent chance of getting the film into at least a festival or two, which means it can get listed on the IMDb, but whether this is sufficient for it to qualify for SFWA eligibility I do not know. In any case, if all goes well it will be a moot point, since it would likely be at least a year before the film is finished and makes it to festivals, and I hope by then to have sold either a novel or enough short stories to have qualified anyway. Still, it's an interesting possibility...)

The End of the Beginning

I mentioned in my previous post that I was planning, in the rewrites, to excise "almost the entire first chapter".

I think I'd like to expand on that.

Until very recently, I'd planned to simply cut the entire first chapter and start with what used to be Chapter Two. But I wasn't really totally satisfied with the beginning. I wasn't sure it was as good a hook as I really wanted. It started with the protagonist staring up at the sky. This is not quite as boring as it sounds—there was an indication, in the first sentence, that he'd just been "caught" (though why and by whom was left unspecified till later), and the sky in question was a very unusual sky that did warrant being stared at. Still, I thought maybe I could figure out a way to do better.

A much more minor point of dissatisfaction with the beginning as it stood had to do with its location. The climax of the story takes place in the ship's hold. (More specifically, in one of its three holds, but that's not the point.) So did Chapter One. I kind of liked the fact that the story began in the same location that it ended (discounting the dénouement). It lent a feeling of going full circle that appealed to me.

Still, the more important matter was to start with a strong hook, something that would really catch the reader's attention. And I wasn't sure the existing beginning was doing it.

As so often happens, the solution, when it came to me, was so blindingly obvious I felt kind of stupid for not thinking of it before.

I'd made some effort, when writing the book, to end each chapter on a bit of a cliffhanger, or on some new revelation or hint of things to come that would (so I hoped) pique the reader's interest and motivate him to read on. Chapter One was no exception. So if the ending of the old Chapter One was designed to hook the reader, maybe it could do the job just as well as the beginning of the new one.

I tried it just now—taking the last few lines of the deleted Chapter One and grafting them onto the beginning of the new Chapter One that had previously been Chapter Two—and you know what? It works. Oh, not perfectly; there are some rough edges and it'll need a bit of reworking. But yes, it's a much, much catchier point to begin. Starting the story just a few sentences earlier than the beginning of the old Chapter Two works wonders. And, as an added bonus, it alleviates my other minor niggle too, about wanting to start the story in the same location as the climax. Great.

So... yeah. I'm much happier with the beginning of the story now then I was a few days ago.

Now I just have to get to the point that I'm as happy about the rest of it.

Rereading

So, I've just finished reading over the first draft of the novel I wrote last year (and of which I'm planning on finally starting the rewrites soon).

This read was just to refamiliarize myself with the novel and see how I felt about it after having left it alone for so long. Turns out I feel pretty good about it. When I started rereading it last night, even after telling myself I really had to get to bed, I kept wanting to read one more chapter, until finally I ended up staying up till 6 a.m. reading the darn thing before I finally managed to wrench myself away and go to bed. I guess the fact that it had me engrossed so much—even though I knew what was going to happen—could be taken as a good sign. (Though the fact that it appeals to me, of course, doesn't necessarily mean it's going to appeal to anyone else.)

That's not to say it doesn't badly need some revisions, though. It could be tightened up quite a bit; there are a lot of passages with more words than are needed, or that tell what can already be inferred from what's shown. There are some rather blatant mistakes; one character's name I frequently got wrong, and another character I somehow managed to (sort of) kill off twice only to apparently forget about it both times and have her show up again as if nothing had happened. And then there are some relics of matters about which I changed my mind during the writing process—another character's name I changed from Ulrigh to Ulright, and it's still Ulrigh in the early chapters; still another character is described as looking fully human in the beginning, when I later decided he didn't look fully human at all, and at the end I also decided he was much younger than I had planned initially, which means I need to excise the references to his gray hairs. And, of course, I've already mentioned my intention of deleting the entire first chapter—or almost the entire chapter, anyway; the last few sentences might be moved to the beginning of what was then Chapter 2 but will now be Chapter 1.

The change that may take the most work, though, is figuring out how to introduce the protagonist's love interest earlier. As it is, she doesn't show up until (what is now) Chapter 9 (she's mentioned by name a bit earlier, in Chapter 5, but only in the context of a list of all the crew members in her shift). That, again, was because of changes I made as I was writing. When I began the story I didn't know the protagonist was going to have a love interest at all, but when her character was introduced for other reasons entirely (and assigned a hitherto otherwise unused name from the list in Chapter 5), it just sort of happened, and I went with it. But while she and the protagonist may not start to get into a relationship till Chapter 9 or 10, I'd really rather have her make an appearance well before that. I'm not sure yet how to gracefully introduce her earlier, but I'll think of something.

Anyway, though, I guess my main point is just that, the inevitable flaws notwithstanding, the novel held up much better to a rereading than I had feared it might. So far so good.

Now I've got to really get into those revisions...