Monday, April 7, 2014

Three Loves Seven, Chapter 10, Part 2 - [undergoing rewrite] and response to a comment

Greetings gentle readers,

After mulling this portion over (Clete's initial interactions with the Seconds as students and a subsequent phone call to Sally), I decided it needed a little more surgery than just polishing it up (this story is complete and has been for over a year and a half--with all the twists and turns fully thought out). So, it's "back in the shop and I've got it up on the lift." Somebody needed just a little more character development revealed and it'll make so much more sense later.

This blog seems to be about a pre-publication of this story, but it's really about my writing and editing process more than anything else to me. When you write a fiction narrative, you happen upon these people and their story. They tell it to you and you try to get it down correctly--that's called a "first draft." But they live in you for a while and as you get to know them, you learn other things and why they do the kooky or aberrant  or illogical things that they do. The characters really take over the story. You have to just get it down as they play it out in front of you. After a while they trust you and you learn so much more about them. They tell you new things. You make corrections. It's very mysterious. So different than writing expository articles for your institutional or corporate master.

On "Conspiracy"

One of my relatives commented that they found it difficult to keep track of who was who in the part called "The Conspiracy of the Second Princesses." I smiled to myself and thought that all was right with world then. Sometimes you're invited in to visit a group who have been interacting with each other for years. They talk very fast and they all have their places of relative status. That portion is intended to be like that kind of situation for the reader. You don't know who the hell any of these people are but you can kind of get the gist of what's happening here.

I don't expect anyone to do this, but if you map out who's saying what, later on you can come back to this meeting and everyone's comments should square up with their personality--that would be like a grad-school thesis deconstruction that I do NOT expect anyone to do. I think I warned all of you earlier that if you're unaccustomed to Chinese names they'll look a bit like gibberish to you, which is one of my intents. To some extent you should be feeling a bit like Clete is feeling. Confusion and disorientation at not having the complete picture.

It's enough that you know Qin Qin gets away with a lot, especially shooting off her mouth, because she's the youngest and visually handicapped to a degree, so she's got a pity gig going and she milks it if she can. Fei is tired of Qin Qin's manipulations and is dismissive of her. Qin Qin has a fanciful notion in her head that Dr. Wong is some legendary figure (kind of like Cortez), but nobody is stupid enough to buy it, especially since it's coming out of her, but they go along with her plan of surveillance since the guy is the most interesting thing to happen in town in a long time. To those who have bothered to read this far, I'll give you this hint: of the Second Princesses, keep track of Nu, Xiaomei, Ling, and of course Qin Qin--they get more "screen time" than the others, but all of them give some impetus to the warrant for the plot at some point.

I've broken a major rule in modern writing in that I've created way more characters to remember than is possible for the average reader to keep track of. Too bad. But I promise I'll be giving you a handy tool in the next chapter along with some exposition that'll help you frame and organize relationships in your head.

That's all for tonight.

Love,
Pops



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Be truthful and frank, but be polite. If you use excessive profanity, I'll assume you have some kind of character flaw like Dr. Wong. Tks!