Kick-Start
Let’s start this year off with a bang – I begin with total honesty and full disclosure:
At this moment, with my “Untitled Sci-Fi/Fantasy Project” I have written slightly over 50k words. I haven’t made much progress at all since NaNoWriMo ended… in fact, most of the words I’ve added to my initial 47k WriMo word count were added yesterday – about 10 minutes AFTER I published that last post.
Much of the word count is dedicated to outline, character bios, background info, research and plot notes. This is the most pre-writing I’ve ever done in my life and I think the reason I’m spending so much time on it is because I’m compensating for the fact that I am incredibly uncomfortable writing this. I’ve posted on this a little bit before, but let me elaborate…
Most of my fiction work is written from the first person perspective. The narrator is the main character and you see deep into his/her own head – their thoughts, their feelings, their motivations… everything is told from their point of view and tainted by their perceptions and biases.
Added to that, I have never written science-fiction/fantasy. My genre of choice is contemporary fiction: real people in the real world facing real problems or dilemmas that could happen to anyone.
Suddenly, I’m responsible for making up an entire universe full of its own laws, rules, cosmologies, and metaphysics. I have to write this in a seamless and entertaining way. I am resisting the Frank Herbert, David Foster Wallace, and J.R.R. Tolkien devices of adding copious endnotes/footnotes and incorporating everything into the narrative. For the first time ever, I can see why they decided to go the way of the endnote/footnote. It’s easier to plunge right in to the story and simply direct the reader to the back of the book where some phrase or bit of history is revealed and explained so the reader will know what’s happening. Easier, yes – but not more enjoyable. I was always annoyed at the disruption to the story. Things were getting good. I was on the edge of my seat!… and then suddenly? “Go to the back of the book because the author is too lazy to describe what a ‘kris’ is in the narrative.”
So, not only do I have to know the names of things (which, incidentally, is why the book is still untitled), I have to know their histories, I have to know complex rules and regulations – I have to know it all. And I have to know it in the 3rd person because the plot is far too expansive to be tethered to one narrator. One narrator can’t know everyone’s motives – they can suppose, they can estimate, they can infer… but they can’t know.
The bits of actual writing (not notes or outline) I’ve actually done are… well, frankly, they’re troubling me. Not in terms of plot – the plot is plugging along nicely. I mean the writing itself. Granted, writing in the 3rd person is a skill I should have developed years ago – there’s no excuse for me to have ignored it so completely. Basically, I’m plowing through and hoping that by the end, I’ll have worked out my 3rd Person Perspective issues so that by the time I get to revisions, I’ll better equipped to deal with the MANY issues I’m sure I’ll have.
Anyway, the moral of this story? I’m hoping it is that “Preparation, Preparation, Preparation” is the key to navigating these choppy waters. I’m figuring at if I at least know all the ins and outs of every major plot point AND when they have to happen, I’ll be able to write myself from point A to point B much more easily.
If I haven’t made it clear enough before, let me just say for the record: this project scares the living hell out of me and it’s come scarily close to making me run straight for the hills.
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