Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

For those who asked, I can’t talk about the Fun Book, it’s still in the squishy stage when it has to be just me. I wouldn’t have brought it up here except that it’s taking time away from You Again and that’s what the Twelve Days are about, what happens as I try to write Zelda.

One of the worst parts about rescuing a past book is that since it’s not new, so much of what I do doesn’t feel creative. There’s something about starting a brand new book that’s both terrifying (one hundred thousand freaking words) and exhilarating (I can do anything!). Rewriting is so much more about craft and decision than it is about story-telling. So I’m thinking maybe running both is keeping me creative enough that I can do the rewrite without losing my mind. Rewriting Agnes damn near killed me. It needed all the rewrites I did, it could probably use another, but it went on too long without me doing anything creative because I was determined to get Agnes out of my life before I started anything new. Looking back, that was a mistake.

The problem in doing both is the story world. I have to be able to enter that story world and believe in it, even in the rewrite, and that’s really hard when I’m doing two books and keeping two worlds in my head. Music and collage help put me there, but there comes a point when that window closes and I’m looking at the book from the outside. That’s good for copy edits and polishing, bad if my rewrite requires me to still write new scenes or to radically change the old ones. So I have to make sure I finish a book before that window closes, and writing two at the same time just ups the chances that I won’t make it.

But the good news is, Zelda is shaping up again in my head, so I think maybe You Again, since it’s been such a long time, will just become a new book. The vestiges of the old world are in my head, but the book I’m writing now comes from where I am now, and so the story world that emerges this time will be different which is probably why it’s sticky now. And the real challenge is to cut out everything that’s going to drag me back to a dead story world. Those sixty-thousand words I had that were going to make this a fast book to write are dwindling with every rewrite because some of them were infodump (a lot of them were infodump) but mostly because Zelda’s different now and so is Rose, not a lot but some, and so I can’t use the parts that are too mired in the old story world. Holding onto those is going kill the story I can tell now.

And then part of it is just that I overwrote this sucker, using massive slugs of dialogue to convey infodump instead of writing scene. And I know better. So now I’m looking at the 7000 words I wrote to get James to Rosemore to meet Zelda, and I’m going to have to knock it down to 2500, 2000 would be better, and that’s not going to be easy. Well, taking off the first 2200 was easy because I started it in the wrong place, in James’s law office instead of on the road. So that was an easy cut. Then I went through and chopped off some more obvious infodump and now it’s down to 3500. A thousand, maybe fifteen hundred to go. It’s going to be a long night.

And after that, my word count will have dropped to 50K. If this keeps up, this book will be fifty words long. But very tight. No infodump. Onward and upward. Or at least onward.

Because I still don’t have that first Zelda scene right.

The new first scene really is much better. It’s still not tight enough and I have to concentrate on the characters more so it’s not so much information swapping and is really conflict. I did another polish on it today and it’s still not where it should be, but I’m happy with what I’ve done.

Tomorrow, I’m going to figure out what James’s first scene is. Originally it was in his office, but that’s starting too far back, I think. So I’m shelving that one–he can have that conversation later at Rosemore–and moving up to a zillion words of James in the car with his horrible relatives. Which I will cut by a half to two-thirds. Scylla’s scene can be shorter, too. And then I’ll have the first chapter.

I’d have gotten more done but the Fun Book called to me again and I worked on it for hours. At this rate, the Fun Book and You Again will be done at the same time. Hey, worse things could happen.

Maybe from now on, I should always have a Fun Book, something I can work on without pressure when the Real Book starts to get to me. It doesn’t seem to be interfering with You Again at all, except for the time loss, and it’s making me happy.

Yeah. The Fun Book stays.

I was supposed to be working today, and instead I caught up on all the back episodes of Heroes. People kept telling me it was wonderful and I kept saying, “I have no time, I must write,” and then my brains dribbled out my ears because all I did was write. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll watch the episode I have on my Direct TV Tivo which I am mentioning here because the damn thing is going out on me after only two years and now it sticks all the time, probably because it’s full of dog hair but I’m still mad at Direct TV.” Where was I? Right. I watched the first episode on NBC.com, but they didn’t have any more so I went to iTunes and downloaded the entire fifteen-episode season so far. It’s a damn good thing I don’t drink or do drugs because my ability to say, “No, really, that’s enough,” is non-existant.

Anyway, it takes time to watch fifteen forty-three minute TV shows (you do the math, i’m an English major) so all I got done today was one lousy table set up in Word with five of the major characters across the top, each with a plot or subplot and the nine plot points along the left–Beginning, Act One, First TP, Act Two, Second TP, Act Three, Third TP, Act Four, and Climax. Then I filled it in. And then I watched more Heroes. Extremely bummed about Charlie, but Hiro is the best. (Is it significant that there’s a Charlie and a Charles? I don’t think so.) Although that scene with Hiro’s father and sister . . . please. Lame. On the other hand, the scene where they’re lying under the van and the van drives away . . . . Keep that writer and fire the one who came up with “Really my sister is a better CEO than I am because I’m sensitive and she’s smart” which completely obliterates ten thousand years of patriarchy in Dad’s mind in one stunningly obvious and unrealistic move. I was praying Dad would say, “Are you insane? She’s a woman,” because I was not expecting that. Instead we got the expected. And the lame.

Where was I? Right. I filled out a table for You Again trying to get all the plots to mesh. And I worked on the plot for the Fun Book, too. But mostly, it was “We could be Heroes” all day. Jessica is turning out to be the Angelus of this show, so much more interesting than her good-two-shoes counterpart. Whining is not attractive, Niki. And then Dr. Who showed up and I was thrilled. Christopher Eccleston is just the best. Especially shoving Peter off a building even though I like Peter. Also I like Mohinder a lot, but could we lose the voiceovers? Voiceovers kill, people. And Adrian Pasdar owns this show whenever he’s onscreen. What a great face he has; when he smiles, he’s 95% teeth, terrifying everybody in sight range. Now there’s a character with some real ambiguity.

You know it’s amazing how well this show handles a HUGE cast of characters so that you really do know them all. I have a hell of a time with that, every one of my books always ends up with seventeen characters (oddly enough, not an exaggeration, I seem to bottom out at actual seventeen) and readers scream that they can’t keep them apart. You Again is no exception. Or it wasn’t until I cut two of them and knocked it back to fifteen. Maybe if I gave them super powers. Evil twins. Secret marks. White eyeballs.

Like I said, I watched Heroes all day today. So I am a sloth, but I’m a happy sloth with a new appreciation of action and a much better understanding of why Too Much Dialogue Is Bad, so it really has been good for the book. And tomorrow I’ll get back to work. Because there are no more episodes of Heroes to watch until Monday.

Although Mollie did say that the latest ep of Supernatural was terrific . . .

I now have all the pieces of You Again separated into different scene files and stashed in Act Folders and I know exactly why Jen said, “No,” and Bob screamed trying to fix it. It’s a puzzle that’s missing three quarters of its pieces and somebody lost the lid to the box with the picture on it.

Of course there’s some good stuff in there. It just doesn’t make any sense when you put it together.

So now it’s time to hit the whiteboard. Scrivener is a godsend on this, it’s helping enormously, but it can’t give me the whole book at a glance. For that I need my whiteboard. I see colored markers in my future.

So what did we learn today, Dorothy?

I know this is definitely a book about fathers. Zelda’s, James’s, Rose’s, I’ve got fathers all over the place.

I know it’s got something to do with clashing realities, something to do with how everybody tells her own story and makes herself the hero and other people supporting players, except the other people think THEY’RE the heroes . . .

I think I know my turning points for Zelda’s father hunt, for the mystery, and for the romance, plus Scyllas subplot.

I know this is a lot more fragmented than I remember and that’s a little frightening.

Argh

Whiteboard Tomorrow.
Panicking Tonight.

I played hookey today and wrote 3500 words on my Fun Book, the one that’s not under contract and won’t be for months. I guess that’s Busman’s Hookey, isn’t it? Shirking work to do work? But it’s so much fun to have a book I’m not talking about, one that I’m just playing with. Everything I wrote is Don’t Look Down Draft which means it’s going to need massive rewrites, but still that’s some work there.

Then I went back to You Again and looked at the first scene. You remember, the one I cut more than half of. It’s still too long. It has too many beats, I think.

The same way stories are broken into scenes, scenes are broken into beats of conflict. Each beat is a struggle of its own that has a climax/turning point that throws the scene into the next beat. I like three-beat scenes because I think that’s a natural rhythm for people, but it’s not something I’m rigid about. If a scene has four beats or two beats and it works, fine by me.

Zelda’s first scene has six beats.

The first beat is her in the car, arguing with Scylla about going into Rosemore.
The second is facing Rose at the front door and then yielding and going in.
The third is in the entry where Rose tells her she wants her to come to Rosemore permanently to start a garden/nursery.
The fourth is in the hallway where Rose tells Zelda about her mother.
The fifth is in the entry, Zelda on her way out the door, when Rose tells her if she stays she’ll help her find her father.
The sixth is Rose’s final move which defeats Zelda completely in this scene, fulfilling everything she was afraid of in the first beat.

I can cut the mother stuff and use that later, i think. That gives me five beats.

And her fight with Rose is really just these four beats:

At the door, resisting going into the entry hall (Scylla).
In the entryway, resisting going into the central hall (garden).
In the central hall, making a break for the entry (father.
In the entry way, not making it out the door and falling into Rose’s clutches.

Except I need that beat with Scylla at the beginning to set the hook and show the reader how much Zelda dreads Rosemore. Except that’s not part of the struggle. Except Rose is in cahoots with Scylla so it IS the first beat of her struggle with Rose. Except the reader won’ t know that, so it’ll feel like I’m switching antagonists.

So it’s

1. In the car, resisting going into Rose’s clutches (Rose speaking through Scylla)
2. At the door, resisting going into the entry hall (Scylla).
3. In the entryway, resisting going into the central hall (garden).
4. In the central hall, making a break for the entry (father.
5. n the entry way, not making it out the door and falling into Rose’s clutches.

That’s still a lot of beats, and that first one is still iffy. Argh. And none of it echoes the last scene which is a pain in the butt because I like to bookend.

So maybe Zelda doesn’t make a break for it. Let’s try this again. Since she’s going to be fighting going out the back door in the climax, maybe she’ll just be fighting going in here.

1. In the car, resisting going into Rose’s clutches (Rose speaking through Scylla)
2. At the door, resisting going into the entry hall (Scylla).
3. In the entryway, resisting going into the central hall (garden).
4. In the central hall, resisting going into the sitting room (father).
5. Trapped in the hall, falling into Rose’s clutches.

Still too much stuff. The scene won’t bear that much info.

1. In the car, resisting going into Rose’s clutches (Rose speaking through Scylla)
2. At the door, resisting going into the entry hall (Scylla, garden).
3. In the entryway, resisting going into the central hall (father).
4. In the central hall, falling into Rose’s clutches.

So more cutting. And shaping because each of those beats should get shorter and right now they don’t. I just rambled. Time to tighten things up, get those rhythms in place so I can go write the last scene and balance them.

Except now it feels too short, too abrupt. Oh, hell, I’m just going to have to go back in and write it. At least it’s not a million slow beats now.

Progress.