{"id":413,"date":"2009-03-03T02:41:53","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T09:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=413"},"modified":"2009-03-03T02:41:53","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T09:41:53","slug":"progress-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/progress-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Progress!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sludging through the middle of Bringing Estella Home<\/em>.\u00a0 I’ve heard people call this the “blue collar work” of writing, all the parts between the beginning chapters and climactic ending chapters.\u00a0 I believe it.<\/p>\n

In particular, I was having some difficulty with chapter 7 last week.\u00a0 I have, basically, three separate plot threads tied up in four viewpoints.\u00a0 Sometimes, it can be frustrating to give them all equal time while putting the scenes together in such a way that they contrast and build off of each other.\u00a0 In particular, it’s difficult to get the chapters right.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard that each chapter is supposed to be its own distinct sub-story, with its rising action, a mini-climax, and a falling action of some kind.\u00a0 I’m fairly confident that I can do this intuitively over one or two viewpoints, but over four viewpoints, with three different plot lines?\u00a0 It’s tough.\u00a0 Last time I tried was with my first novel, and when I went back for the rewrite I had to reorder several of the chapters, especially the first three ones.<\/p>\n

The way I’m doing it for Bringing Estella Home<\/em> is picking one of the plot lines to be the main subject, if you will, of the chapter.\u00a0 I build on the other plot lines as well, but the big climax, the big reveal, comes in the plot line that I’ve designated for that chapter.\u00a0 Typically, I’ll start each chapter with a viewpoint from the plot line that is central to the rising and falling action of that chapter–or, if I don’t start it with the viewpoint, I start it with the characters talking about the idea that is central to the climax of the chapter.<\/p>\n

Originally, I thought that the climax \/ central aspect of chapter 7 would be the brainwashing \/ mind-altering procedures that Ben undergoes in becoming a soldier for the Hameji.\u00a0 I started with James discussing the Hameji with the other mercenaries on the ship and talking about various legends they’ve heard of mind-altering drugs that give the Hameji special powers.\u00a0 The next scene was Ben forced to take some of those drugs.<\/p>\n

However, I really hadn’t figured out Ben’s part of the story at this point.\u00a0 I knew he’d take the drug, and I knew how it would change him, but I didn’t know what happened next.\u00a0 As a result, the rest of the chapter just felt like a chore, one that I accomplished over several late nights (probably to the detriment of the quality of the writing :P)<\/p>\n

It wasn’t working.\u00a0 The chapter just didn’t feel like it held together.<\/p>\n

Then, I had a genius idea–why not make the last scene of chapter 6 the first scene of chapter 7?\u00a0 The viewpoint was from Estella, meeting the jealous head wife of the Hameji overlord.\u00a0 That scene set up the conflict for the next two chapters of Estella’s story–in retrospect, why didn’t I make it an opening scene for that reason alone?<\/p>\n

I don’t know.\u00a0 But it worked out wonderfully well!\u00a0 Once I shifted the central focus of the story to Estella, EVERYTHING fell into place!\u00a0 Her conflict at this point really was a lot more interesting than anything else in the chapter.<\/p>\n

So now, with chapter 7 under my belt, I am WAY excited for chapter 8!\u00a0 While I was walking back from school one day, I figured out exactly what needs to happen next in his story, and it is amazing!\u00a0 Brutal, violent, and torturous, but it is amazing!\u00a0 And this is the perfect chapter to insert James’s philosophical discussion with Danica, the one that I wrote down nearly a month ago just because I had to get it out!\u00a0 I’m excited.\u00a0 Maybe I’ll even finish it before Saturday.<\/p>\n

Anyways, it is 2:30 am, and I am way tired.\u00a0 Time to get some sleep.\u00a0 Thank goodness my first class doesn’t start until noon! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m sludging through the middle of Bringing Estella Home.\u00a0 I’ve heard people call this the “blue collar work” of writing, all the parts between the beginning chapters and climactic ending chapters.\u00a0 I believe it. In particular, I was having some difficulty with chapter 7 last week.\u00a0 I have, basically, three separate plot threads tied up… Continue reading Progress!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68],"tags":[108,42,95,8,73,74,104,100,599,63,103],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","tag-climax","tag-frustrations","tag-lack-of-sleep","tag-writing-in-general","tag-planning","tag-plot","tag-point-of-view","tag-the-hameji","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-triumphs","tag-writing-chapters","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-6F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}