90: Fundamental Flaws & Changes in Structure
8/7/2015
I’m in my own place now, living alone with nothing to do but write. It’s perfect for my Batu work. Better than ever before because I don’t have any friends and nowhere to go all day. I have books, but they get no more than an hour a day. Usually nothing at all.
I moved in on July 27th and have been working hard ever since. Loving it. From 7AM until midnight or later. With only an hour’s nap in the afternoon, and 15-minute breaks for meals and a shower, I’ve been writing 15-16 hours a day for the last week.
What I’ve accomplished in that time is the rewriting of Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, which is comprised of chapters 83-98. Which reminds me, I’ve redesignated my novel’s structure so that what I used to call chapters are now Episodes, and what I used to call scenes are now chapters. The reason for this is purely psychological. I personally loathe reading long chapters, so why was I writing a book with chapters 60-100 pages long? Everything is already broken down into seven-page scenes (average), so it’s easily redesignated and the perfect length for a chapter. Nothing has changed except how I label things.
Anyway, there were 16 chapters in Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, and though I already had the first draft done before coming to Walla Walla, the rewrite of all 16 chapters entailed a lot of revision and additions. An Additional chapter was added, and one was split into two, so the original 14 is now 16. It took all day, every day, to get it done, but I believe The Shadow Falls is now up to par with the previous eight episodes. If not better.
I’m really excited about the quality, and I think as my skills improve it may make the earlier Episodes look pretty shabby. Which means I’ll have a lot of work to do on the computer to bring everything up to a consistent level. Though it’s not just my craftsmanship with language that is improving, but also my imagination and the nuances of environment and the development of drama. Things are getting richer and deeper, which is wonderful.
I really believe the most crucial ingredient in achieving this is to have my own private space with no distractions whatsoever. No job, no bills, no family or friends (aside from the occasional correspondence), no TV – nothing that needs doing or requiring my attention. Unfortunately, this won’t last long. I’m safe through November, but I may have to move again after that. So, if I want to finish my first book by 2016, I only have four safe months to do it.
This last chapter I finished was number 98, and I have 641 pages written.
Also, Guma is now dead. And I like the direction Siona is going at the moment – off the deep end. Like Joyul before her in The Kulu, Siona is promising to upstage my main characters. Probably a bad sign.
Speaking of bad signs, I was just reading another book on writing fiction this morning, and I learned a nice trick to discover whether I have a plotting and a premise-building problem or not. If I’m able to rearrange my chapters or episodes into a different sequence, then I’m in trouble. It’s a sign that the story doesn’t develop but is merely a collection of random (though interesting) events. The good news is that Part Two: Left Behind (Episodes 5-8) is totally connected where the episodes cannot be reshuffled without everything being changed.
In Episode Five, Diallo’s losing the kulu leads him to run away. That leads to Episode Six, where he is lost and Mosai goes after him and gets killed. That leads to Episode Seven, where Diallo gets help from Alena to put Mosai’s remains to rest. And that leads to Episode Eight, where Diallo and Alena are together, but Alena is sent away to be married, and Diallo goes after her.
So, all of Left Behind is a chain of events that cannot be rearranged with simple adjustments. Part One: Wings of Providence, however, is not causally connected in this way. It is arranged chronologically, but beyond the change in the character’s ages and passing references to previous events, there is no absolute necessity for having the episodes arranged in the order they are, aside from Alena’s opening chapter needing to remain first. But with minor adjustments any of the other three may be reshuffled.
This is a plotting and premise problem. Luckily, it is only Wings of Providence that fails to develop causally. And it’s nothing beyond fixing, though it’s going to take some contemplation and careful readjustments. This problem came about because I was content to rely on my intuition for what feels right as a sequence of events, rather than constructing clear causal relationships in the narrative. So, now I have to go back through it and forge after the fact a strong chain of causality that will bind the elements of my story as a cohesive whole.
For years now I’ve been struggling to come up with a satisfying nugget statement, or a brief answer to “what’s your book about?” And now I can see why it’s been so hard to answer that.
The reason I’ve had such a hard time saying what my premise is (what my book is about), is because it’s not about anything. Nothing in particular anyway. My story needs to focus on one or two particular aspects of human nature or life, not all aspects of it. To try to be about everything in one book is to be about nothing. I need to focus on one, or a few related, particulars.
I’ve basically been writing a biography, which is ironic because I distinctly dislike biographies (though I just read two a week ago). Without knowing what your story’s premise is, you end up simply imitating life (biography), which is fundamentally meaningless with all its byways and blind alleys. No matter how interesting those byways and blind alleys are, if they are not connected and necessary to support your premise then they are irrelevant, diluting the strength of the story.
So, what am I going to do about it?
I’m not sure.
Logically, the first thing I need to do is isolate my premise. The closest I’ve come to answering “what’s your book about?” is by saying it’s a coming-of-age story. But that’s more of a theme, or even a genre. Maybe it would make more sense to look at Part Two: Left Behind as my lead for finding my premise, since it’s the only section where the plot is properly developed with a chain of causations.
Over halfway through the book and I’m just now figuring out I’ve been doing it wrong all along. I had already felt something was missing, now I know what. Though the magnitude of it is daunting. But… Nothing is beyond fixing if you’re willing to put in the work.
Present-Day Reflection
8/23/2026
This is the big structural shift I was waiting for as I reread these journal entries, though the younger me is referring to Episodes for some strange reason. Perhaps because an episodic structure doesn’t require a premise for the whole, just for each individual episode. Whatever. He’ll get rid of that idea soon enough and just start calling the core elements Parts or Chapters.
And yes, I eventually went back to bring everything up to speed so that Wings of Providence as a complete first novel has a clear premise.
