Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Who's writing this book? Me or my subconscious?

I'm at the "falling in love with the book" phase.  Doubts have been banished.  All I see are the possibilities.

This Vampire story is getting thematically deeper than I expected.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "deep" but it is deeper than I'd originally planned.  The subconscious has thrown me a plot that may be beyond my abilities to fully exploit, but I'm going to try.

I'm still writing swiftly, but I've decided to go back and give it a rewrite.  Not just post it on my blog the way I'd planned.   I think it deserves more of an effort.

(Not that FREEDY wasn't worth the effort, it was just a complete story the way it was...)

Having figured out the overall direction to the end of the book was a big relief.  I wasn't sure I had an ending, but now it's pretty clear in a dim way.


Oh, oh.  An unexpected plot development.  It really throws the rest of the book into a different direction.  Do I dare ignore it?  It seems so obvious!  (When I read the chapter to Linda, she immediately picked up the plot development, which probably means most readers will.  Dare I defy that?)


Other than that, I now have the book fully thought out.

There comes a time in every book when I know I'm going to finish it.

There comes a time in every book where I wish my vision of the story was already completed.  It's as if I have a canvass and I've sketched in the entire surface, and now comes the hard work of painting it inch by inch.   I have the vision fully in my head -- but it's a vision that will be hard to match in reality

"Do that," I tell myself.  "Let it come out the way I want it to."

I have two very difficult things yet to accomplish.  I have to portray the main character's 'conversion' in a believable manner.  And I have to show the main female protagonist's forgiveness in a believable manner.

Everything else works fine.  But those two plot developments are essential to the story working. They are also the hardest things to pull off convincingly.

That's where most of the rewriting will be focused, I suspect.  Pulling off those two narrative tricks.



Later in the day:  I wrote the 'conversion' chapter, and I think it works.  I didn't think I could pull that off, but my subconscious apparently had the solution.

Who's writing this book?  Me or my subconscious?

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