stillsostrange | Entries tagged with prayers

And lo, I have seen the Psychedelic Furs, and they were good. Mars Williams on sax made the show--my love of 80s sax is deep and abiding.

Sure enough, complaining to LJ solved my problem. I know who the Plucky Love Interest is, what her immediate history and damage are, and why she won't be able to walk away when confronted with her girlfriend's family drama. This character has been waiting for her story for five years, so I'm glad she's finally found it.

I think this means I'm finally ready to rewrite the first chapter. After I finish revising Kingdoms, of course.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Portal 2

I mentioned earlier about Prayers to Broken Stone and its troubles with the division of boyfriend/roller derby, and how I planned to splice two characters together to alleviate this problem. And in many ways it worked. The new character is much stronger than either of the originals, and their backstories have integrated into a better whole great.

One of the characters spliced filled the role of Plucky Love Interest. The book insisted on regrowing this role with a different character. Okay, fine. I like PLIs, in theory, and the character is positioned to do fun and important things plotwise. Only now this new character will not tell me her damn name, or many relevant details.

Unless, of course, she's telling me right now, thanks to the power of LJ-bitching.

If it really is the person who's talking to me now, though, I officially have an overabundance of N-names. Writing is hard.

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: Portal 2

Adjustment Bureau: Sweet and well-acted, with a nice understated SFnal twist. A little too heart-warming, maybe, or at least too easy, but I like the characters enough that I mostly don't care.

But. Comma. I am so fucking sick of romances wherein all the narrative weight is given to one character. By which of course I mean the male character. David was completely privileged by the narrative. David and Elise's lives didn't intersect; she got caught in his orbit. Damon and Blunt made me care about their characters equally, but the narrative didn't. And in a romance where both characters are supposed to be risking terrible sacrifice to be together, I damn well want to see both sides.

And speaking of characters and narrative weight, my decision yesterday to splice two characters in Prayers into one is having much greater effect than I imagined. The book is spinning in wildly different directions now--the brooding love interest who was supposed to be an equal third has fallen almost entirely by the wayside. Another character whose role hasn't changed has started taking on a whole new appearance and demeanor in my head. The plucky paleontologist love interest--one of the characters who got spliced--has grown back in a new body, with a new personality, and is now the female lead's love interest instead of the male's. This is all very alarming, but I'm curious to see how it will shake out.

Current Mood: recumbent

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.

Current Mood: tired

In honor of the day, I've put up the first three chapters of Prayers to Broken Stone (a Lovecraftian romance, or travelogue with ghouls) here. (This may or may not end up being the next novel I write.) And the same short story and flash piece that have been up forever are still here. I really need to change those out one of these days.

Also, there's "Ballistic", the Shadow Unit ep I helped with. And the rest of Shadow Unit is pretty well stained with pixels, too.

My arms aren't nearly as sore as I thought they'd be. Either the real pain will kick in tonight, or I was wussier than I thought.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Skinny Puppy - Haze

I was in a serious committed relationship with Prayers for exactly a day. Then the post-novel magpie brain kicked in and I opened Pinion. I went over 4190 words today, the first two chapters, weeding suck and posing questions that I don't have answers for yet. This thing is full of plot holes, but it still has more actual plot than Prayers, I think.

I figure it can't hurt to work on Pinion. It's angsty and emo and full of fraught 20-somethings, but I have two years left to write about fraught 20-somethings, so I might as well do it now. And it's the kind of book that accumulates cool and fucked-up shit just because it can. The Strix, the Voltron angel, a decaying pig spirit guide... I need to figure out who gets the decaying pig.

Current Mood: vaguely tired
Current Music: Discovery

Nin90: Day 7
Words today: 3848 (some of those were actually written yesterday after I'd logged)
Words total: 15688

15688 / 67500 words. 23% done!
Reason for stopping: end of chapter, and extreme PMS
Words Word don't know: dolmas, honeytrap, greying, stritching, many things German and Greek (mmmm, dolmas...)
Mean things: asking a girl out, sleep dep, attacked by monsters, arrested, betrayal, owing nasty people favors

Opening lines: The city smells different in the mornings. Adrian isn't used to this hour, the sun near to cresting overhead, whitewashed walls glowing fiercely. His eyes ache, especially the left, and he squints against the turquoise glare of doors and window frames, the same fierce shade as the sky. Shards of light dance off windows, sharp enough to cut.

Closing lines: Holly collapses on the bed, lacking even the energy to switch off the lamp. She presses her face into a pillow and tries not to cry, or scream. Jericho, you bastard. And even worse, the voice in the back of her mind that sounds sixteen years old and whispers plaintively--I thought you were my friend. For once sleep swallows her with merciful speed.

This book continues to be lopsided in regards to boyfriend vs. roller derby. One of these drafts I'll get it sorted out.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: Discovery

Nin90: Day 6
Words today: 1632
Words total: 11733
Reason for stopping: the next scene is thwartsome, and I need to do webstuff for a bit
Mean things: emoness, hypnagogia
Words word don't know: slitted, gawkers, ghul, all Greek words ever
Opening lines: Adrian can't sleep. Beyond his window, night slips away, the flavor of darkness changing as dawn grows near. He paces his narrow room, arms folded across his chest. Insomnia is a faithful companion--his most frequent companion. He should be out, it whispers--hunting, moving, doing something. Anything but pacing his cage this way. The sleeplessness worsens every summer, and the restlessness. Winter is kinder, lets him hibernate.

Closing lines: Rebecca frowns as Cate leans out. "Are you all right?" // "Yeah." She takes a deep breath, tugs up the strap of her tank top. "Just a bad dream." // "Well, you slept late enough anyway. Get dressed and have breakfast with me." Yeah, that one's pretty boring.

Damn you Lush! How can you take away my Reincarnate?! Damn youse all to hell!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Discovery

Mmm, evil sexy Maynard...

Nin90 Day 4
Words today: 2929
Words total: 10102

10102 / 67500 words. 15% done!
Reason for stopping: can't figure out the next scene
Sustenance: jambalaya and wine
Mammalian assistance: Biological warfare from both ends of the cat
Words Word don't know: spiderweb, keloid, taloned, kyphotic, shite
Words I'm surprised Word do know: crepuscule

Opening lines: They wake as the sun crawls below the ragged skyline and shadows melt across the streets. This is their time--crepuscule, twilight, in-between times.

Closing lines: She glances back once despite her pride, glimpses his face ghostly through the shadowed glass. Then he fades into the darkness, silent as Eurydice.

For public accountability, I've put the first chapter up here.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Puscifer - Rev 22:20

Nin90 Day 3
Prayers to Broken Stone
Words today: 2195
Words total: 7147

7147 / 67500 words. 11% done!

Opening lines: Cate can't sleep that night, even after she draws the curtains in her hotel room, blocking the sight of the mirror-black sea. She lies in the warm darkness, hugging a pillow against her chest and trying to explain away what she saw.

Closing lines: And now she has to find him again. It would be easier if she didn't love him. His face lingers behind her eyes as she sinks into sleep. (Yeah, a little emo there. Might fix that in the next pass.)

Story quirks: I've found the first thematic concept of this book--insomnia. No one around here sleeps well. (Other overused words that I'll call thematic include dust, stone, bones, and shadows.)

I was going to do more, but I got distracted by the need to update my scanner drivers, which triggered PMSy wrath. The first target of my wrath--the SciFi channel. If I suffer through one more of their train-wreck original movies only to watch a competent black guy (Coolio no less, goddammit! Coolio, I will buy you a water heater!) die so some useless-ass white guy can live, I am going to cut a bitch. Many bitches. As many as I can find.

Maybe I can find some white people to kill in Prayers.

Also, Fantasy's favorite story of 2007 poll. Not that I am shamelessly pandering for votes or anything.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: cats eating

3589 words, and a partridge in a pear tree.

4916 / 67500 words. 7% done!

Two more scenes down, hopefully with a little less suck.

Words Word don't know: ichor, deadlands, livor, goth, saponification, migmatites, melanistic

To steal a metric from

magicnoire:

Opening lines:
Down and down and down. Nothing all around them, echoing and infinite, Caliban's hand the only thing Holly feels. She keeps her eyes closed against the dark.

Closing lines:
Cate lets Rebecca pull her up; the breeze chills her sweat-damp skin as she stands. The German family hovers nearby--gawking, or making sure she doesn't need more help. The man is gone.

She wipes her palm on her pants before anyone sees the blood.

The beauty of this book is that it's a travelogue with ghouls. Visit exciting places in Europe and the Middle East! Look at dead bodies! Run from monsters! Learn recipes from the best Anubite chefs!

And now I will have pizza and vegetate for a while.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The The - Dogs of Lust/Erasure - Too Darn Hot

Novel in 90: Day 1

Prayers to Broken Stone
Words today: 1327
Words total: 1327
Reason for stopping: scene
Sustenance: tomato basil soup and bread
Tyop: n/a
Darling: nothing new
Mean things: angst
Words Word don't know: gravedigging, goosebumps

I'm white-papering everything to get some of the suck out of the first 20k, though I'm still keeping big chunks of the original.

I'm also joining

qwerty_apes, because it looks fun.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Tom Waits - It's All Right With Me

PreNaNo Day 2

Prayers to Broken Stone

4,410 / 50,000
(8.8%)

Darling: n/a
Tyop: n/a
Words Word don't know: migmatites, taverna, knobbly
Mean things: Killed a lot of people Holly knew, plus a bunch of redshirts. Made Cate hallucinate and nearly pass out.
Sustenance: Not enough! Red Badger needs food badly.
Exercise: weights this morning

Wow, I'm ahead of quota so far. Neat. I hit some sort of suck zen today, where the words started coming and I stopped editing. Hence my scenes are rough, glossed over, and poorly paced. But I have words!

The book got much happier when I freed it of the false constraints left over from Violet and let it run amok. Now I'll be constantly pausing to look up stuff about Naxos and London. But I have words!

And I worked in the rain of blood!