![\"Camp](\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Camp-Nanowrimo-2014-04-19.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It’s been hard getting back into SPECTRAL IRON – the beginning of the story is a smoothly progressing freight train, but about a third of the way through, the story went off the tracks — not because there was anything wrong with the ideas, but because they lacked the right organization. I had to move many, many chapters around before I got the overall structure right.<\/p>\n
Then, I found that I’d done “tricks” to speed up the narrative—scene changes, description, shifts of scale—which work great when a story is complete, but in early drafts just distract from creating what John Gardner called “the vivid continuous dream” of fiction. National Novel Writing Month material, for me, must be like that dream, continuously moving forward from point to point.<\/p>\n
Often, if I was willing to just “dethrone my darlings” I could make progress. The old writer’s advice to “kill your darlings” is something I have a love-hate relationship with, but in this case, I interpret “darlings” as a great turn of phrase that started a scene or chapter in the early draft—but which I found were getting in the way.<\/p>\n
Usually, when I couldn’t go forward from the next unwritten part of the scene, it was because the darling, while it sounded cool, glossed over too much. To fix the problem, I generally didn’t have to delete the darling; I just instead demoted it from its privileged status of starting a scene, rolled my mind back to the point just before the scene break, and asked: no, seriously: what would really happen next?<\/p>\n
Thinking very closely about how characters would react to a life-changing event, in the next hours or minutes or even seconds after it happened, is something that produced (for me) more real, honest, and compelling reactions—and, usually, created a far more solid framework for all the scenes that followed, enabling me to think about them clearly and write more quickly.<\/p>\n
This strategy has been working well for me, and today it really has started to pay off. I’m getting back on track at last.<\/p>\n
Oh, yes, an excerpt:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo,\u201d Nyissa said, delicately picking up one of the gumdrops with her chopsticks. She gingerly put it in her mouth, sliding it past her fangs with the white ivory prongs, closing her mouth\u2014then her eyes closed in bliss. \u201cAhhh. You\u2019ve cultivated a different set of skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeauty is a skill?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDakota,\u201d Nyissa said, smiling at me mirthfully. \u201cYou are beautiful, but you\u2019re not trying to be beautiful: you\u2019re trying to be a butch badass biker. You wear leather, and a Mohawk, and actually ride a bike, even a fuel efficient one. Your whole outfit says: don\u2019t mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s supposed to say, check out my tattoos,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does say that,\u201d she said, though today my arms were covered with the sleeves of a turtleneck. \u201cBut hairstyles and transport are more serious choices than a coat. You\u2019ve cultivated a whole set of lifestyle skills to project a butch image, down to your manly handshake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now I covered my face with my hand. \u201cAh, I\u2019ll never live that down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI, on the other hand, am a vampire dominatrix,\u201d Nyissa said. \u201cI lure men and women to my bed with my beauty and the promise of a mixture of pleasure and pain. That, too, is a set of lifestyle choices\u2014down to my quite extensive wardrobe, and the shopping that goes with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Your success at that,\u201d I said, \u201chas a lot to do with your physical beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, but, you don\u2019t need a great body to look hot,\u201d Nyissa insisted. \u201cIt\u2019s all about your sense of style. You need to project the aura that you\u2019re fuckable. Not dressing in a way that asks or offers sex\u2014but how you show off your body shows you know what sex is, and how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was staring at her. My jaw was dropped. Nyissa slowly raised her chopsticks, taking them in her mouth with a sly smile. She cleaned them between her fangs with a lick of her tongue. Then she leaned forward and touched them beneath my chin, closing my mouth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It occurs to me that the art of finding an excerpt which is interesting, yet reveals no plot points, is itself a skill. Hopefully I’m doing it well.<\/p>\n
-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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