structure – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Struggling not to settle

I’m in the middle of my first revision pass through Heart of the Nebula, direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and…I don’t know exactly how to put this, but the story seems to be simultaneously smoother and more shallow. Plot-wise, everything works great; character-wise, there just doesn’t seem to be as much depth as my other work.

I remember finishing the first draft in May, and being surprised at how well structured it was. Each of the three major plot points happened after exactly five chapters, and each of the chapters was almost perfectly balanced–a far cry from my previous work. I had a few stops and starts in the first part, but everything after the first hundred pages was smooth as gravy. What’s more, I’m finding in this revision that not a whole lot needs to change; it works pretty well as-is.

And yet…I can help but feel as if something is missing. The characters just aren’t coming alive the way they did in my previous works. The story isn’t quite as engaging, the climaxes quite as gut-wrenching as I would like. It feels like a good story, but not a great story.

Here’s the thing: my previous stories were all broken in this phase. Desert Stars was so broken I had to write another novel to figure out how to finish it–and even then, the second half of the book went entirely in the wrong direction and had to be thrown out. Bringing Stella Home had a solid storyline, but Stella’s character was completely broken and had to be rebuilt from the bottom up. And Genesis Earth had half a dozen false starts, and at least as many chapters that had to be thrown out because they did nothing to advance the plot.

But Heart of the Nebula isn’t exactly broken, it’s just…not at the level I would like. And I worry that because it isn’t broken, I won’t feel as compelled to make it better. I worked hard on the others, and learned a lot of lessons which helped me to write this book, but even if I’ve hit my stride and this is the result, it feels too much like settling. I can do better.

None of this probably makes any sense if you haven’t read the manuscript, but I hope it doesn’t sound too much like whining. Even if these are problems, these are good problems and I’m happy to have them. When I share this with my first readers, they will probably have all sorts of insights that will make me smack my forehead and make everything awesome again.

I guess my point is that I don’t want to settle, even though this draft will probably not be as good as I’d like it to be. I’ll fix all the known problems, then send it out to my first readers and trust them to help me find the unknown problems.

In the meantime, I should probably start something new. I have a ton of great ideas for the fantasy novel, and bouncing them off of friends has really helped me to figure out what else the story needs. After I finish reading American Gods, I’ll stock up on some fantasy to get into the right mindset, starting with David Gemmell (incidently, at dinner group tonight, I literally squeed while talking about David Gemmell. It was simultaneously embarrassing and really awesome).

Enough of this. Time for sleep.

Mysterium by Robert Charles Wilson

Nobody knows why the government chose the small town of Two Rivers, Michigan, as the site for a top secret military project. Even most of the people involved in the project don’t know what it’s really about. That’s alright, because most of the denizens of this backwoods community are used to minding their own business. But after a mysterious explosion bathes the entire city in light, that becomes impossible.

On the outskirts of town, all the roads and power lines dead end in ancient virgin forest. It’s as if a perfect circle has been drawn around the town on the map, and everything within the circle has been transported to a parallel world.

A very unfriendly parallel world.

Robert Charles Wilson’s writing is awesome. I could eat up his prose all day. It not only flows beautifully, it’s clear and transparent, to the point where I forget that I’m reading and feel as if I’m there. He always uses the right expression, the right metaphor, and yet his prose never attracts so much attention to itself that it distracts from the story.

I noticed several similarities between Mysterium and Wilson’s other novels that I’ve read. All of them start in our modern world and move into a mysterious, unfamiliar milieu. All of them involve strange religions and religious conflicts. All of them involve male and female characters struggling to face personal relationship problems and eventually coming together. In these ways, this story felt very much like Spin.

At the same time, I can definitely tell that this is one of Wilson’s earlier works. The story flows like a thriller, but lags in certain points. After the town is transported into the parallel dimension, the story seems to meander without any clear direction. For several chapters, I lost the sense of progress that usually accompanies a good plot. The resolution receives very little foreshadowing–the “surprising yet inevitable” element was only “inevitable” three or four chapters from the end. If it weren’t for Wilson’s beautiful writing, I would have put this book down in the middle.

Unlike Spin, I found the milieu of this story somewhat depressing–not necessarily because of the setting itself (though it’s not the kind of alternate present that I’d want to live in), but because the people of Two Rivers never go back.

According to Card, there are two basic types of milieu stories: stories where the protagonist returns profoundly changed, or stories where the protagonist “goes native” and becomes assimilated. But…if the new world isn’t the kind of place you’d want to live in–in other words, if it’s dystopian (and Wilson’s alternate world in Mysterium is fairly dystopian)–then there’s this tension of “will the protagonist make it back? Will they return?” And if they don’t return, the story is emotionally disappointing. That was the case for me with Mysterium.

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From this review, it probably sounds like I hated this book. That wasn’t the case–not at all! This was a good story, and I enjoyed it. I finished the last hundred pages at a sprint at 1:30 in the morning–it was definitely that kind of a book. I couldn’t put it down. And at the same time, it was thoughtful and profound (as you can tell from my previous post, “Why I love Robert Charles Wilson“).

I’ve probably said enough. If you like thrilling, parallel world adventure stories with a contemplative, thoughtful “what if?” element, read this book. Even with all the misgivings I’ve mentioned here, it’s good SF. Very good.