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Written by Paul
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Monday, 06 August 2012 00:54 |
For those not in the know, "Charlie Foxtrot" is military alphabet-ese for "CF", which in this case stands for "Clusterfuck" sometimes altered to "Goatfuck". It indicates a maneuver or operation that has just gone right to hell, which is, of course what is about to happen. (See that kids? That's called foreshadowing.)
Here we finally draw back the curtain on the main Big Bad. We're more than halfway through the book, and I suppose that could be seen as a misstep in building a narrative, but not always. The first chapter of a novel, ideally, should delineate the main characters, the setting, and the central conflict of the story. This is not always easy or even possible to do. In fact, in many cases I feel like this approach is a stigmata of the modern publishing era. When an editor or agent looks at your manuscript, you get about three paragraphs to hook them in, or you go right back out the door.
I feel like this has a pernicious effect on modern fiction - goading authors to front-load their novels in an attempt to make them take off faster - to be more like movies in other words. I won't engage in the tired practice of harping on how many classics of literature would never make it to market today because they are too slow-moving and obtuse - fiction is always a product of its' time, and Dickens and others were as influenced by the fact that they were paid by the word as any modern author is by the need to grab attention right off.
Writing a serialized piece like this is always walking a line between making every chapter 'pop' in order to grab casual readers, and to make a story that hangs together as a whole once the entire thing is done and all stitched together. You have to make sure the pace is not too breathless, nor too dilated by the episodic nature. I think we do a good job of balancing those two needs.
The conflict in this story was never entirely about a villain, this story was about time and age, and how our lives get away from us and suddenly we feel like the best years have passed us by and how did that happen? The conflict was always within the characters, in their struggles to come to terms with who they are in relation to who they used to be. The villain, therefore, had to be someone who represented that - a kind of ghost from the past, caught out of time and therefore a threat both real and existential to the lives our characters live now.
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Written by Paul
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Friday, 03 August 2012 01:03 |
This chapter is, I think, one of the more rampantly dirty things I have put in this book. I always like it when I am able to juxtapose two contrasting sex acts one with the other, and one of the cool things about modern technology is it lets me do that with Russ' Google specs. This way I can get maximum filth into the chapter without losing track of anybody, and getting as many characters off at once as possible. I mean look at this: I got four different characters off, three distinct sex acts, and some incest in there to boot.
It was important to me, doing the incest, that Chris be a totally willing and eager participant. Any way you write a guy schmoozing his daughter into sex is just going to come off creepy. So the scene had to A: be from her perspective, and B: show that she was all about that shit. I don't want there to be a whiff of the victim about Chris. She's awesome, and right now I am in the middle of writing up her crowning moment of awesome in chapter 51, so to me she is even more awesome.
Need to seriously get to work on the outline and other pre-production for the next novel, tentatively titled Scarlet Sword and Golden Mask. It will be a full-on swashbuckler with a masked hero, derring to be do-ed, my favorite villain ever, and vengeful whores. It's going to be a blast.
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Written by Paul
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Wednesday, 01 August 2012 01:02 |
Been quiet in the comments lately, and I guess I should take that to mean we're doing good, as people would be more likely to comment if they were unhappy with what we are doing. Still, this is the beginning of the ramp-up to the third act of the novel, and I always worry we'll lose people before the action kicks up. I tell myself to have more respect for my audience. After all, if I wanted a huge audience, I would write utter crap, as that seems to be the key to success. Problem is, I can't bring myself to do that.
Posting early today, and we'll see how that goes here. We're not getting up as early as we were, so I've been getting the post up at 11 or noon, which makes me feel even lazier than I normally do. So here I'm posting before bed. We have a delayed post function, but in the past its behavior has been erratic, and I'm not sure what time the website thinks it is.
Here we finally get Max, Russ, and Chris all together in one chapter, all doing stuff that will shortly be advancing the fuck out of the plot and getting to the main villain. There's always a bit of risk, keeping the Big Bad in the shadows this long, but in this case, I hope the anticipation is justified. He's one of the scarier villains I've ever written, and I like how he came out. Just today I finished Chapter 50, and it's looking like we'll get maybe 55 chapters, plus two or three bonus scenes, because there were sex scenes I want to do but couldn't fit into the narrative. So: More fun to come.
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