Goat Notes

Inspired by this thought-provoking conversation about the tension between story-telling and word-craft, but at a somewhat different angle and not directly responsive to it.  The same events are covered in each of the following... yarns. 

First up, we have this exciting fight scene from super action thriller The Flowerpot Conspiracy!

Bill hit Ben. “You rat!” snarled Ben. Ben hit Bill and knocked him down. 

“Weed!” cried Weed.

I might call The Flowerpot Conspiracy many things, but the salient one here is under-written.  Even Dan Brown's prose needs to do more than this, to engage the reader with the tale.

Next, we turn to Death and the Daisy, a hard-hitting pulp-style adventure:

Ben stepped in front of Weed. “Back off, Bill!” he warned.

Bill came in swinging. Ben’s block was a hairsplit late, and his brother’s fist smashed into his nose, staggering him backwards in a sputter of pain and blood. “You rat!” snarled Ben, over a rising vegetable keening from Weed.   He surged up under Bill’s careless guard, and slugged him a good one to the solar plexus. Bill whuffed, choked, and folded. Ben cast a cold eye down on him, and finished the job with a hammer-blow to his occiput. Bill went right down and stayed there. Ben wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, then withdrew his long unsavoury handkerchief from his pocket, and clapped it to his gouting nose. It hurt like the devil, but at least it didn’t feel broken.

“Weeeeeed!” cried Weed.

Death and the Daisy is not, perhaps, very good.  For one thing, I write punch-ups not much better than I practice them.  However, in terms of matching style and matter, I think it's about on the right level.  This is deliberately about the most basic level of story for which it's worth finding a properly-matching prose style: Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men fall out over Weed; Bill goes to the bad and does foo-bar; Ben and Weed emerge triumphant.

Now we can turn the prose dial right to the other extreme.  Here's the excerpt from a treatment I consider overwritten - that ambitious romantic mediaeval fantasy, The Weed at the World's End:

Bill’s eyes, cold and unwholesome as the stagnant waters of some peat-hag or mire in the kindless days of February, glinted evilly. As a man wisp-tempted Ben’s brother now seemed to him; as in a manner led by some vague unhallowed light through obscure marsh-tracks and by-ways in which all goals go awry, united only in their despair of any good ending.

Yet it was the Damsel Weed who must now be his only care – whether by duty, as his oath and his chivalry charged him alike; or for the right of the matter, seeing how Weed had set aside all thought of comfort or safety in her care for the many-coloured world, whereas Bill ever slighted all causes save his own liking and pleasure; or yet only for Ben’s very love and delight in that dear flower-nymph’s fellowship, who had become to him through many trials indeed his Day’s-Eye.

Bare is back without brother behind it, thought Ben in great anguish of mind; yet say again this, that love exceeds blood as blood surpasses water; and my soul’s choice is made! “Back off, Bill!” he warned.

His words fell as a doom: the author could no more be arsed: the reader slumped gratefully into the all-solacing arms of Morpheus.

Oh wait, they didn't.  This news brought home to me through my current whole-story, line-by-line critical pass over Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland.  I'm about half-way through that now.

- Luke's strategy in the Rising, on more careful analysis, involves entirely too much of: "Ha!  The nobles are used to summer warfare!  But this is winter warfare, so we can cunningly deploy tactics against them which will work even less well in winter!"

- If Dougal Dare-All really needs Luke to come up with the good plan Luke presently supplies him, he needs to be re-named Dougal Duh!-All forthwith.  They are supposed to be experts in totally different spheres.

- Neither Katy Elflocks nor any of her circle are supposed to possess any spark of military genius.  This does not mean they won't notice when a plan is slapped together entirely out of hope, cheek, plot wire and gaffer tape.

- And the fact that they're exceptionally good with hope and gaffer tape doesn't mean they won't insist on something more substantial at the core of it.

- In particular, neither Luke, nor Dougal, nor the former merchant-adventurer, nor the clever grange-clerk of Fairfields are going to involve themselves in a campaign whose logistics appear to have been delegated to the rats, rats, big as bloomin' cats, in the quartermaster's stores.

Katy ain't no Elrond, Fairfields ain't no Rivendell, and all their fellowship are well aware that Kateverse providence is somewhat less trustworthy than a prince's promises.  This is not the fairy-tale part of the story!  (At least, not on that overt a level.)

I'm seeing and sketching out solutions as I write, and trying to minimize the amount of new or magical matter in them.  The good news is that getting the reconnaissance and logistics right should simultaneously solve another problem: the narrative slackness of the important Fairfields arc, which was written in largely exploratory mode the first time around.  The less good news is that this exposes a need for even more re-writing than I'd expected.  Still, after all the time I've spent on the book so far, it would be a crying shame to send it out half-formed into the world like the proverbial unlicked bear-cub!

Living as I do in one of the USA's loyallest subject-allies, I have a certain personal interest in the forthcoming elections across the pond.  The Tea Party has not exactly lived up to my libertarian hopes, but nevertheless I wish to offer its new improved GOP some campaign ideas that may help it fulfil its... historic destiny.  Which I have come to very much hope it will.

1) "Government ought to be small enough to drown in a bathtub.  Romney for God-King in November!"

2) "Tom Turkey says: Vote for me, or Barack O'Gander will abolish Christmas!  Gobble gobble!"

3) "We stand for Government small enough to fit inside a woman's body!  'Big' Dick Santorum for President!"

4) "When we've done the jobs you elected us to do, we promise to go straight back to our boardrooms, and fulfil our Contracts with America!"

5) "We need to bring the wisdom and rigour of the marketplace to Washington.  Who'll start the bidding?"

6) "Is it just us, or does Obama's having a FOREIGN policy sound kind of unpatriotic to you?"

7) "The Founding Fathers believed in a government of laws, not women!"

8) "Government is rubbish at everything but killing people and stealing their stuff.  We'll keep Washington focused on what it's good at!"

9) "Work camps not food stamps!"

10) "Darwin, we double dog dare you!"

And in a spirit of bipartisanship, I will offer the Democrats a similar list of hard-to-beat campaign themes, guaranteed to play to their own best strengths:

1) "Dig, baby, dig!"

Any other helpful contributions to either side will be, no doubt, gratefully accepted.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: Finished first revising pass on the Last Quest arc, which is thematically a cascade of heroic descents into, and escapes/rescues from, successively more profound hells of one kind or another.  This happened more or less by accident, but is now being sharpened and accented by design, because it's so well-placed to foreshadow the corresponding public hell-harrowings attempted by our heroes in the Rising.  This re-emphasis also builds up and draws together the matter of the Curse.

Also, I now know why Katy is so ignorant of such a horrid lurker on her threshold, until Kate and Luke make it... impossible to overlook any more.

I'm now moving onto the Wassail arc, which I pretty much made up on the hoof and which needs to be purged of considerable process-writing and dead-ends.  The numerous characters of Fairfields will want to be made consistent with their later development and portrayal in the Rising, and the exploratory sections repurposed to fit with events later in the book.

Before I reach the Rising, I ought to have some research materials I've ordered, which I need to get Garcastle and its sketchy community into a truer focus.

In my copious spare time, I continue exploring the broad frontiers of my ignorance about West African history and culture, in order to be somewhat better-informed when I finally get past this epic and onto Deity & Decolonization/ Fatal Exploit/ Translation & Transgression/ the One About The Chocolate.

Three Katherines of Allingdale: Another week of donkey-work.  Analysing and amending the Lord Evil arc; annotating old scenes for revision in light of it; writing the outlines for the first set of new ones; and finally coming up with a rough geography of the north-eastern counties and foreign nations which is plausibly consistent across the whole tale.

Still to do: rinse and repeat for the Puffin-Genius arc; ditto for the Matter of Fairfields; ditto for the Big Bad/the Untold Tale.  Then a consistency-check per major character, a correction-scheme for all major blunders so far noted, and the big straight-through rewrite before final polishing.

(sigh)

The Deed of Katy Elflocks: A new 2,000 word scene composed last night and this morning, to retrofit one of the thorns in Katy's side from Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland, and make the portrayal of the Dales more consistent between the two stories.  Also planted a couple of Chekhov's guns, so that they're not just pulled out of my ear in Killer-Kate.  Pulling guns out one's ear is not, I'm told, considered best practice by the cognoscenti.

I spent most of the last week donkeying through the major structural critique of Three Katherines as a complete novel.  What came out of this:

1) I'm going to go ahead with the two-part story in strongly differentiated voices.  First, the theme's expounding in Alan Eaton's lighter, terser, more courtly and satirical fairy-tale of Katy.  Then, the development and resolution in Hick-Mack-Heck and Sairey Salt-the-Stew's denser, fiercer, more grounded and committed folk-epic of Killer-Kate.  The Lord Dunsany knob is turned higher in Alan's style, the William Morris knob in Hick and Sairey's, though I think they're both recognizably modes of mine.  The authors don't explicitly intrude themselves into the tale at any stage, but it helps me to have a fair sense of where they're each coming from.

2) The unfolding of the untold middle tale of Kit Fox seems to more or less work in Killer-Kate: again, I'm going to leave that part of the structure largely as it is, give or take a bit of modification in detail.

3) The Rival Revolution subplot doesn't need much more work than I just supplied it.  The Lord Evil, Puffin Superior, and Diplomatic subplots will on the other hand require significant structural changes, not least because they all bear on just what exactly everybody is fighting for.  I've donkeyed up some of the legal, customary, and folk-historical groundwork over the past week, and shall start the Political Rewrite shortly.  This won't - or shouldn't - add to the proportion of politics in the story: it's about rooting it in local reality, and about making the characters' actions mesh more reasonably, whilst removing patches of pointless intriguey filler that never went anywhere.  It's by far the biggest and most critical section of the rewrite, and will certainly involve at least three new chapters.  It may also involve the disappearance of one or more of the existing ones: can't see that far ahead, yet.

Anyway, the job's begun, and I'm writing actual story again!

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: A running problem with the revision has been trying to make Evil Lord Evil's behaviour make consistent sense that doesn't boil down, on closer analysis, to "Everything I do, I do it cos I'm Stupid Evil!"   Yes, he is what at least in parlour-psychological terms would be called a high-functioning sociopath; but, hello, high-functioning!

But I've finally worked out what he's about, and why he's always slipped out of my grasp like a greased pig up till now.  I've been thinking of the less-evil antagonists as the cautious, canny, reluctant modernizers, and Lord Evil as the defender of the worst of the bad old ways - he is, after all, pretty much the poster boy for viciously irresponsible aristocratic privilege.

Actually, everything he does starts making a hell of a lot more sense now I understand him as the modernizer - the improver - the guy who's really good at figuring out how to make oppression pay and look shiny, instead of cost and smell stinky.  His rivals are rationalists, but they're conservative mediaeval rationalists: not his kind at all.  But Lord Evil's found the hole in their law-web, and - for all his early mistakes - he's found a 'progressive' way to mine money out of it, at the peasants' expense, without destroying them.   And it's an exploit that only a certain sort of... focused... mind could have thought of.

In a way it's the inverse of Our Heroes' existential challenge to the old manorial regime.  Our lad might be really at home today, in the ministries and boardrooms of the prison-industrial complex.

Anyhow, now I know where his policy's coming from, and why some of his existing advice goes the way it does.  From where he's standing, Katy & Co. just threw the Dale-Lords the opportunity of three lifetimes.

And I think he's finally thrown me the master-clue to the Revised Political Plot.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: Oy! Still bogged down in the political revision, largely because the Puffin Superior's part in the later story has also had to put out back-roots that will support it - and some of her issues are metaphysical more than political, hence even more bewildering to deal with. This is the trouble with her rise from "plot person who knows something critical to the climax" to "significant major character in her own right". It's only a somewhat outrageous parallel to say that I got three-quarters through the first draft, and then Father Brown stepped out of Chestertonia to join the opposition. The Puffin is not a negligible quantity.

And she seems to have decided that what is best for my soul is lots of lovely work. Pah!

There are only so many hours one can spend on this sort of thing every day, so I've decided to start reserving at least one of them for Chocolate and the Gods, before it starts going all blotchy and bloomy on me.

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: A breakthrough!  I've finally teased apart the threads of the infamous Four Agenda Pile-Up at Garcastle.  Lord Evil now has something to do that is... worthy... of him; Relatively Okay Genius's masterstroke, disentangled with few changes from the former muddle, shows up as much more shocking and brilliant; and there is lively and desperate action to replace the worst passages of talking heads and ominous introspections.  The cost of all this is another chapter in the middle, provisionally dubbed Hell-Stalk.  That's the third, now.  Even at an optimistic estimate, I'm going to have to allow a month for this trio.  Depending on how the rest of the revision goes, the Easter deadline may still be attainable.

Coming to the end of the political critique now.  By this weekend, I want to have the revised structure it implies up and running.  The simpler critique of the Big Bad's thread, and the unpredictable process of trying to integrate Kate with Katy around Kit's pivotal untold story, will then conclude the structural issues, and set me free for the big new sections and deletions.  This will surely take me up to the beginning of March, when I can start the detail edits; after which, beta-reading, final polish, and submission I guess in mid-spring.

Quiet worldbuilding and fantasy for Chocolate and the Gods continues to lighten these sloggy hours, though it's not yet ready to be told directly.  Chocolate qua chocolate begins to seem an unexpectedly minor detail of its flavour.

...Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland doesn't half have a lot of political errors, inconsistencies, implausibilities, and handwaves in it.  So I'm still stuck critiquing them, hours a day.  My revision guide documents are getting to be a small book of their own.  On the other hand, the end is slowly coming into sight.  As well it should do, since I've already used up a fifth of my allotted revision time on this alone, and will surely hit a quarter before it's finally done.

Yes, I know I said "biggest single task", but...!  Next time, I think I'm going to do a lot more note-making in parallel with the writing.  Even, or especially, when I know I'm keeping several different options in play.

Onwards and slogwards!