Writing Chapter 3 went fairly smoothly, but when I got to Chapter 5 I realized that I’d made a geography error in Chapter 4. To fix that involved going back and laying in some small details in the first two chapters and rewriting the last two pages of Chapter 3 in order to lead in correctly to Chapter 4.
I’ll be able to keep the emotional throughline of Chapter 4, but have to move it to a different location. Now, I could wait and just make a note that I’m going to fix that, but it’s almost as easy to do the shift now. Sometimes I do that, just make a note [move this to rose garden] and keep writing as if it’s already there.
In this case, the change of location is also going to change the reactions of some of the characters so I’d rather fix it now becuase the potential for it to cause other changes is large enough that I’ll save effort by doing it now.
I’ve got this puppetry workshop I do in elementary schools where we adapt “The Three Little Pigs” Each group of kids gets to do their own production and make changes to the basic story. The one big rule of adaptation is, “If you change one thing, it changes everything else.”
True in puppet shows. True in SF worldbuilding. True in moving scenic locations.
Here’s a snippet of Chapter 3
Jane nodded, as she followed his train of thought. “The twist of the glamour creates, in essence, two layers of fabric that keep the interior from being either a mirror or a dark sphere. And you think a jacquard would enhance the effect?”
Hey Mary–I know that this is primarily a blog about whatever happens to be going on in your life, and not about teaching writing, but could you possibly tell a little bit about what you mean by “emotional throughline”? I googled the phrase, both as three words and as two, and found lots of sites where people talk knowingly about emotional throughlines, but not a real good definition or a how-to.
Let me put my thoughts in order and I’ll do a post about it. I suspect it’ll be all touchy-feelie with little in the way of “this is how” and more of metaphors.
Awesome! Whatever you feel like doing will be new to me. 🙂
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy following along as you write.
Okay, I’m also totally curious to know where you’re headed with the jacquard thread–so to speak 🙂
Keen! It’s incredibly helpful for me to get feedback in this stage because it helps me know what people are latching onto, which in turn helps my focus.
I really love those re-tells of classic stories. It’s fun to see what different people come up with!
And it’s true. A lot of times, you can’t just change one thing, because other things stop making sense.