onward, plus Q&A 20
Sep. 26th, 2008 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyThe Marriage of True Minds, Part 3 (of 10): 900 words
Running total: 6,000 words
Comments:This section may get longer, if it turns out there's more Traumatic Backstory to exposit. My protagonist consoles himself with the excellent beer I've invented for him to drink.
This is distinctly going to be a novella or a very short novel. And, no, I have no idea what I'll do with it when it's done. But if it isn't broken any longer--or at least not as badly broken--that'll be a damn good start. It's certainly going to be a very different story.
[Per my interlocutor's request, I've cleaned up the English of these questions--let me say right here that I am both awed by and very grateful for my readers who are not native English speakers. That's going the extra mile for a story, and I appreciate it.]
Q: You had the idea in your head for 15 years, does that mean you had it written for that long and just couldn't get a publisher to take it? Or did it take that long to work the idea out in your head?
A: I started writing Mélusine in very late 1993/early 1994. I finished the draft that actually sold to Ace in early 2003--and it was bought in October '03. It took me ten years, in other words, to become a competent enough writer to tell the story I was trying to tell. And of course, during those same ten years, I was getting my B.A., my M.A., and my Ph.D., getting married, all those other growing up type things.
Q: Gideon's death is the catalyst for Felix's exile (broadly speaking, something horrendous had to happen to make Felix do something dreadful enough to get himself exiled, and Mildmay's death was not an option): did you plan it that way? Was Gideon always intended to die?
A: Let me say here that killing Gideon was one of the hardest things I've ever done as a writer. I didn't want to. But, yes, something unspeakably awful had to happen, and Gideon was Felix's weak point. I can still remember how sick I felt when the idea hit me. But anything less was going to be cheating. I didn't plan it, exactly, but I knew the book ended with Felix being exiled and also pretty much at his personal nadir. A lot of constructing the plot of The Mirador was working backwards, trying to figure out how to get to the thing that I knew.
I still feel bad about Gideon.
Q: You said at one point in the FAQ that Felix and Mildmay had to be brothers, because the plot demanded it. In what way? Were they at one point not brothers and you discovered that that didn’t work?
A: When I started writing Mélusine, Felix was the only character I knew about. Mildmay was a later addition, and I had to do a lot of juggling to get his storyline to balance with Felix's. And then when they finally met each other, I needed a reason for Mildmay to care what happened to Felix, because there are so many reasons he shouldn't. It wasn't that I'd tried it the other way; it was that I got to Hermione and said, Oh. They must be brothers. And as usual, my backbrain knew more than I did, since siblings turned out to be kind of thematically all over the series.
Running total: 6,000 words
Comments:This section may get longer, if it turns out there's more Traumatic Backstory to exposit. My protagonist consoles himself with the excellent beer I've invented for him to drink.
This is distinctly going to be a novella or a very short novel. And, no, I have no idea what I'll do with it when it's done. But if it isn't broken any longer--or at least not as badly broken--that'll be a damn good start. It's certainly going to be a very different story.
[Per my interlocutor's request, I've cleaned up the English of these questions--let me say right here that I am both awed by and very grateful for my readers who are not native English speakers. That's going the extra mile for a story, and I appreciate it.]
Q: You had the idea in your head for 15 years, does that mean you had it written for that long and just couldn't get a publisher to take it? Or did it take that long to work the idea out in your head?
A: I started writing Mélusine in very late 1993/early 1994. I finished the draft that actually sold to Ace in early 2003--and it was bought in October '03. It took me ten years, in other words, to become a competent enough writer to tell the story I was trying to tell. And of course, during those same ten years, I was getting my B.A., my M.A., and my Ph.D., getting married, all those other growing up type things.
Q: Gideon's death is the catalyst for Felix's exile (broadly speaking, something horrendous had to happen to make Felix do something dreadful enough to get himself exiled, and Mildmay's death was not an option): did you plan it that way? Was Gideon always intended to die?
A: Let me say here that killing Gideon was one of the hardest things I've ever done as a writer. I didn't want to. But, yes, something unspeakably awful had to happen, and Gideon was Felix's weak point. I can still remember how sick I felt when the idea hit me. But anything less was going to be cheating. I didn't plan it, exactly, but I knew the book ended with Felix being exiled and also pretty much at his personal nadir. A lot of constructing the plot of The Mirador was working backwards, trying to figure out how to get to the thing that I knew.
I still feel bad about Gideon.
Q: You said at one point in the FAQ that Felix and Mildmay had to be brothers, because the plot demanded it. In what way? Were they at one point not brothers and you discovered that that didn’t work?
A: When I started writing Mélusine, Felix was the only character I knew about. Mildmay was a later addition, and I had to do a lot of juggling to get his storyline to balance with Felix's. And then when they finally met each other, I needed a reason for Mildmay to care what happened to Felix, because there are so many reasons he shouldn't. It wasn't that I'd tried it the other way; it was that I got to Hermione and said, Oh. They must be brothers. And as usual, my backbrain knew more than I did, since siblings turned out to be kind of thematically all over the series.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-27 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-27 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-27 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-27 12:50 pm (UTC)Thanks for that. It's an interesting look into writing. (As has this all!)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-27 07:58 pm (UTC)Authors who create rich characters like you, Dean Koontz, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Andrew Vachss seem to take a particular hard blow when the muse steers them that way. I haven't gotten that far in my book yet, but it's getting kind of close and I've been avoiding the book the past few days because of it >.>
no subject
Date: 2008-09-30 05:13 am (UTC)...I swear, every time I read your lj I find a new reason to respect you even more.
(All the same, I think the neighbors for about a block in all directions heard me swearing when I read that Gideon was dead.)