54: The Weirdness
4/23/2013
Finished the third scene last night, with Alena dancing in the rain. Eight pages in three days. I feel kind of ambiguous about the results, which might be a bad sign. It seems to be okay, but it doesn’t carry even a fraction of the emotional impact, upon rereading it, that it did as I wrote it. This reminds me of Rockwell’s statement, that making art is like throwing a ball against a wall – it only comes back to you with half the power that you threw it. So, you better throw it hard. Or not, depending on the effect you’re looking for. And to be honest, I’m not even sure at this juncture how much power I want in this scene. Not every scene needs, or should have, a big emotional punch. The drama gets tiresome. I won’t know for sure whether the scene’s flavor is precisely right until I read the whole book again and read it in context. At which time, I can try to pump up or deflate each scene as needed. The whole is more important than the parts.
What I like about the scene are the unexpected details. Joyul was not even present in this scene until I went to write it. In fact, I got two or three pages into it, having described Alena dancing alone in the rain, when I decided I wanted Joyul dancing with her. Her presence made it easier to make it interesting. We already had a one-way dialogue in the last scene, and I didn’t want Alena talking at Diallo throughout the whole thing like Badru did. That’s boring and irritating to work with, so I brought in Joyul, who is a good foil for Alena.
Her presence made everything better there at the river. She also needs to be there so when Guma comes to beat-up Diallo it doesn't look like Alena was the one who told Guma about Diallo pushing her. One can assume that Joyul told Guma. Though, of course, she didn’t. Diallo himself told Guma, since Guma only exists in his head. Or else he’s a spirit who just knows everything. I’m careful to write it in such a way that Guma could be either one – a figment of Diallo’s subconscious, or an actual ghost.
The whole notion of Diallo thinking of himself as a fictional character was also a spur of the moment addition, though I’m not sure I like it in this context or how I handled it. I had that concept in my notes as a possible idea to play with, and I plugged it in when I felt I was at a spot that needed something like that, but I’m not sure if it works as it is.
Now that I’m done with this scene I can see I’m going to have to switch the scene sequence. Originally, the Guma scene was supposed to come next. But now I see that Bakar, Tamal, and Dougga’s scene must come next. As a reader of my own work, I find that Diallo’s head is not something I want to be inside of right now. His emotions and thoughts are too predictable and would be annoying to be intimate with, so I don’t want another scene right now from his POV.
In deciding the POV for the next scene it was between Bakar and Tamal, and I decided on Tamal because this is the perfect time and place to touch on some of his personal tragedies: mother dying in childbirth when he was six, one of his brothers dying from The Fever, the other accidentally killed by Tamal himself – which is part of Tamal’s drive for precision and perfectionism as an adult. And it’s important to hint at how Diallo is not necessarily special in the dramatic misfortunes of his life. He’s just one of The Wounded. His friends have their own tales too that the reader doesn’t get more than a glimpse of.
As far as Tamal’s clairvoyance is concerned, I hinted at it in Chapter Five: The Kulu, just after Diallo lost his father’s flute, but I’m not sure yet if I really want to go there. Giving even one of them a supernatural ability may be going too far with the weirdness. Some weirdness is good, but it’s a fine line. It’s something to think about. Does it enhance, or does it cheapen? Not sure. I’ll know before I start the next scene though.
It’s the same day… barely. Almost midnight and I just finished the fourth scene. An entire scene in one day. In one evening, in fact. But it was only 2 ½ pages long.
After working out the particulars of Tamal’s scene I realized the Guma scene had to go first, like it or not. But I managed to avoid the self-pity pitfalls I didn’t want to fall into, and I got a short little scene with some punch to it (pun intended). It’s brutal, and I already see some things to add and change, but it’s done for now.
The biggest defect is that it leaves Tuk looking like a bad doggy because he didn’t defend Diallo. But other than somehow removing Tuk from the scene entirely, I’m not sure what I can do about it. After all, Guma wasn’t really there
Present-Day Reflection
7/18/2026
Yes, I not only kept the clairvoyance weirdness of Tamal in The Kulu chapter, but I took it to whole new level in Chapter 13: The Search For Bakar. When I went back to rewrite and flesh out all of Part One in Wings of Providence (so that all four boys got equal treatment in grounding them early on) I planted the first seeds of Tamal’s gift in a very pronounced way. Though I didn’t stall the story in any way to provide explanations concerning it.
I’m embracing the weirdness.
I see it as being the same kind of weirdness you find in Star Trek, where they give the ship’s science officer quasi-psychic abilities. And Star Trek is supposed to be science-fiction, not fantasy. Spock is ostensibly the paragon of logic and rationality, not given to weirdness. Yet fans don’t even question the science of mind melds, or the lack of explanation for how he transferred what amounts to be his soul into McCoy, only to later have it transferred back into his newly regenerated body.
I certainly don’t go that far with weirdness in my stories, even though I’m the one who stipulates to indulging in fantasy to a certain degree.
