Having an apostrophe

[stillsostrange]

Tonight I was pondering Prayers to Broken Stone, one of several unfinished novels that's in the running to be my next project. Prayers has had structural problems for a while; namely, I originally envisioned it as a braided narrative, with three characters having equal weight. Great. Except that one character had all the plot but a thin backstory, one had a well-fleshed backstory but no plot, and the third was mostly hanging around being the brooding love interest. But I was trying to give them equal time. Unsurprisingly, this wasn't working very well.

As I tried to hash this out with the boy, I kept coming back to a solution: Plot + Backstory = better character. I balked a little, because I like both characters. But years of liking has not grown me a solid book structure. So as soon as I'm done with the next pass of Kingdoms, I'll begin performing character surgery. It will be painful, but perhaps for the best.

Unless I have a better apostrophe before then.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Having just finished a novel with a braided narrative, all I will say is: never again. I just do not juggle that well. You may very well do it far better than I.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the dreaded character-ectomy. Hate those. Hate 'em, Jake.

You can always re-use the character elsewhere...

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Oh god. So much sympathy. I ruined an entire novel attempt by rigorously sticking to alternating PoV chapters, and I'm wrestling with the urge to do that again. My preference for parallel lines and structural elegance keep wreaking havoc on actually writing a story well.