Pines

Or, "Why the New A Fine Frenzy Album Is Forever Endeared to Me Even Though I Have Not Yet Listened to It."

I WILL get this. Soon, hopefully.

Honestly, I think I need to start a running tally of what has become endeared to me this October, because I feel like it's going to be one of those seasons. Those ridiculous perfect storms of writing where stuff just starts popping left and right. Which I suppose for Wonderfall is fitting, because epiphanies are kind of magical in their own way. But, really now? First Lowe's and now a CD I haven't even heard. Which I want. Because A Fine Frenzy's stuff is like, "Magical Realism, The Music." I'm playing the first album right now, and "Borrowed Time" and "Rangers" are on my Wonderfall playlist.

Anyway, why Pines? This morning I was sitting at the dining room table, trying to refine Wonderfall's plot because I had fallen into one of my regular pitfalls: overcomplicating things. It wasn't that the story had too much going on, it was that it had too much going on for the tone I'm aiming for, so I was either trying to pare it down or reframe it. Things were going uncharacteristically well, actually - I had adjusted the plot so basically the same things were going on, but in a different context. I was working on character motivations, then - what Elias, Lorelei, and Connor each really wanted, and what the antagonist (ostensibly not a real villain this time) wanted. It was taking so long to come up with that I stopped thinking about it after a while, and moved on to other things.

Now, part of the problem that arises in the story is that Connor and the antagonist want close to the same thing, though not exactly. I knew what Connor wanted, but the antagonist's motives were still vague. I knew he or she wanted an event called "Wonderfall" to occur for a specific purpose, whereas Connor was just waiting for Wonderfall for the sake of it. The question was, what specific thing did the antagonist want Wonderfall for?

Later on, I got up to make toast, mulling it over, when it hit me. The thought process looked like this, though of course the details aren't really that simple. Um, SLIGHT VAGUE KINDA SPOILERS:

Haha, spoilers, yeah, I guess. A magical garden is in some way involved. But anyway, what the antagonist is going for versus what everyone else in the story wants just fit so perfectly with the tone. And then I just fell in love with the story all over again. Plus, I did want to keep the story a bit on the shorter side, by my standards, and the garden idea made a bunch of things fall into place.

*Sigh* I do love October. 

In Which I Discuss the Perils of Planning Stuff

Cut to October 31, 2011. I know what my plot is. I know who my characters are. I am ready to get stuff written. Planned stuff. The plot I've (kind of) slaved over for basically the whole month.

Then November 1st happened and all that kind of just melted and slithered down the drain as I barreled blindly forth with the rough equivalent of my plot's deformed half-sibling. I don't even remember for sure what the original plot entailed, but I'm pretty sure the title (Dark Horse) was the only thing that remained entirely intact.

This is the NaNoWriMo strain of plot ADD. Dozens of ideas flutter around my head all October, I stalwartly keep focus on one of them, and then some invisible force slams in on NaNo Eve and, well, "Goodbye, focus! It was nice seeing you! We'll have to do this again sometime! Like, next October!"

Now, frankly, I don't think that will happen this year. I'm all, like emotionally invested this time around. Wonderfall (which is based on my poems found here) is my new adopted child, and I love it, and it gives me seizures when I think too hard about it but I ignore those, eat some chocolate, and plan it anyway. There's this nifty article here in which, I kid you not, the Incredible Hulk totally curb-stomps the Three Act story structure in favor of Shakespeare's five acts, and I used it to draw Wonderfall into a modified six act version. It's the most outlining I've done in a year, and I'm going to do more.

See, this year I'm finally employing the Psycho Person Notebook technique, in which I stuff I comp book completely full with outlining and character bios and random writing resources I printed off the Internet. It's working wonders for me, truly. But there are still kinks to be worked out.

Like POINT OF VIEW. THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE.

We do battle every year. I'm pretty sure I wrote an epic forum post about it last year and everything.

Anyway, Wonderfall has three protagonists: Elias, Connor, and Lorelei, the latter of which is our wonderfall girl. And if you hopped on over to Figment and read the poem, you know she doesn't stay long. Except, we still need to know what she's up to. So naturally, I think, well, we'll do third person limited - then we can go around to Eli and Connie and her and know what's what. Except that, when Elias (arguably the true main character) first burst into existence, it was in the form of a first person and pretty badass opening monologue-type thing. And Lore, bless her, had a very Lore-like second chapter too. But I can't get a handle on how Connor would sound in first person, I'm sketch about attempting two male point of view characters when I've never even done one for any length of time, and I'm frankly not a huge fan of rotating point of views to begin with.

So, I say, "OK, so third-person limited it is." Except I still kind of want to write Elias. I hear him talking. Only, I can't just write Elias, because then how on earth would he know what Connor and Lore were secretly getting themselves into. Grr.

And then, I'm still working on character motivations, which of their flaws to haunt them with, and all that good writerly stuff. I'm doing fine with that. I know Elias is going to be put on the spot for how he's always avoiding drama at the cost of ignoring important issues, and Connor's going to be selfish and ignore how he's been pretty distant lately and call Elias out on it. Stuff like that. It's just, depending on the point of view, certain things are going to be highlighted more than others.

Oh, the joys of NaNo planning. Now, I'm off to go find some rubber cement, because stick glue doesn't cut it when pasting things into a notebook.

Writing Revelations, and Other Fun Things to Do With Home Improvement

(Long story.)

So, I forgot to mention this in my last post (it was late, I was half asleep, etc.), but the local Lowe's is pretty much endeared to me forever.

The genre wars are still raging, as far as my NaNo is concerned, but yesterday I had one of those little writing epiphanies we all know and love and kind of get desperate waiting for. Now, I had already been to a different Lowe's and a Home Depot in the last couple of days, and when I walked into this new store I wasn't particularly impressed.

This, x1000.

I'm silly. I judge most stores by what music they're playing and how bright it is, and this Lowe's was bright enough, but they were playing this mainstream hip-hop/pop station - and a song I really don't like, no less. I am not a big hip-hop person, and Home Depot had already wowed me with a rock station that played some of my old favorites I'd forgotten existed. So, I was inwardly cringing at the music and getting sidetracked taking in the sheer number of different bathroom faucet fixtures they had on display.

Also, I was doing what I always do when I'm out shopping: imagining story characters. What they would do if they were here, why would they be here, what story am I putting them in, again? That sort of thing. I'm of the "voices in my head" and "hallucinations" writing set, and I take my characters everywhere. It makes trips less boring.

This is important
later.

As I wandered toward my actual destination (flooring, by the way), I was thinking about the aforementioned cyberpunk plot's characters. It's this trio of friends, and I was pondering the group dynamic (especially the sorta-romance between two of them), and how the girl is kind of the mystery. She's the one that's going to get the plot in motion, get into the weird stuff, generally be obfuscating. Because she's hard for me to get my head around, and sometimes I attribute that sort of thing to an actual character trait.

The thing is, with the plot in general, I was having a real hard time getting it squished into something I felt capable of writing. I wanted a story slightly less out of control than my Camp NaNo project, and the cyberpunk plot? Totally insane, over-the-top madness in my head.

Then, Lowe's came through. Bless its heart. I'm staring up at this huge contraption draped with laminate samples, and it's been ages since the last time I heard the song, when here comes the opening lines - I need a sign to let me know you're here / all of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere. "Calling All Angels" by Train, right? No big deal.

Except, in my head, it's like, "OHMYGOODNESS IT'S NOT CYBERPUNK AT ALL IT'S MAGICAL REALISM AND THE SONG'S LIKE, ELIAS TALKING TO LORE!"

Cue a torrent of mental images I have yet to sort through. It involved what was definitely not ghosts, but perhaps something similar. My mind blown, I continue to stare up at the laminate.

So, yeah, suddenly my crazy cyberpunk characters are plopped into my beloved home genre. Which is kind of great, because they're the kind of people I wouldn't expect to find there, and I'm excited to see how they fit in.

Another odd thing about me and writing - all my ideas come with color schemes. Swatches of color are intrinsically tied to the atmosphere I feel off any one story, so this one had this really light, white/bright color/mid-morning sun vibe along with some grittiness that Elias brings in.

And that, friends, is what I've been spazzing about for the last day or so.

Genres . . . And I went to the library today!

I've backed away from considering NaNo plots at this point. It's dangerous, and I foresee tentacled monstrosities, born from too many ideas melding together at once, seeking vengeance against me for their mangled state.

So, instead, I'm contemplating genres. What I feel like writing. Atmosphere, etc.

The candidates thus far are:

• Magical Realism
• Eerie Urban Fantasy (as reflected by my current novel synopsis)
• Cyberpunk (of the over-the-top-stylized-don't-take-this-seriously action variety)

The last two actually have plot ideas tied to them. As for magical realism, I just have characters in mind. I'm kind of reading up on magical realism at this point, as I ponder. It would definitely be a much more subtle story than the other two genre options. But in all honesty, I think it's just going to come down to what story's screaming at me the loudest come the last week of October.

Oh, yes, and my library winnings. 

I checked out:

• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Zodiac by Neal Stephenson
• Embassytown by China Mieville
• Writing the Paranormal Novel by Steven Harper
• and Between the Lines: Master the Subtle Elements of Fiction Writing by Jessica Page Morrell

And from the book sale I bought The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson, and The Irish Game by Matthew Hart for fifty cents each.