Comments on entry #58364

On Trivial Pursuits

Tuesday the Twenty-Fifth of August, Two Thousand and Nine

The irony is that usually I'm much better at starting stories than ending them.

I am feeling very frustrated by the Fear Sweeney opening scene. I can't get the pacing right, or the dialogue sounding natural. Dialogue is what I do! It's like my one big skill in writing. And I thought that by changing the introduction from the old narrative-heavy version to a dialogue-focused one I might solve the problems I've been having with that scene for seven damn years, but I'm just not getting anywhere. I rewrite it, I rewrite the rewrites, and each new version sounds more stilted than the last. By the middle of the second part, it starts developing real charm and a natural flow better than anything I've written before or since, but this first scene, the crucial introduction to the characters and the themes, is almost unreadable! But after God-only-knows how many drafts (probably 20 major revisions and I think five complete rewrites) it's become so overprocessed that it's become the literary equivalent of Kraft Singles. And I can't just go back to an earlier version, because those weren't good enough either.

I don't know how to escape this cycle. I think part of it is that so much of the emotional content of the scene was written by 2002!Martin, and 2009!Martin doesn't even remember what 2002!Martin was feeling when he wrote it. 2009!Martin has a broader repertoire of emotional content to draw on, but can't bring up the exact stew of feelings that went into the first version of this scene. So while the first version had terrible prose, it at least meant it; the current version is clearly written by a better writer, but lacks the sincerity, and that's what makes it sound unnatural.

So how do I recapture it? Maybe I should just try to clear my memory of all the earlier drafts and just start writing from scratch, infusing it with my current emotional state rather than trying to recapture a long-forgotten one. Maybe I should get piss-drunk to drop my writerly inhibitions before attempting it. Maybe now that I'm older than the characters I once dreamed of growing up to be just like, it's too late. Maybe I need to be 20 years old and innocent and so very wrong about everything again. Maybe I'm too smart now. Maybe I'm too sane.

posted by Martin Marks at 8:00 in the evening // five comments

Sometimes distance is your only man, don't concentrate on trying to get it right, concentrate on capturing the naivete of your characters, not your own, because you have changed doesn't mean the characters have, approach them as strangers who are trying to tell you a story, don't create, report, all that is in them in the later scenes is in them earlier, just tell their story

comment by the old feller // Tuesday, the 25th of August, 2009, at 8:37 in the evening

You are smarter and saner and a better writer. Maybe there's a 2009!Martin book that is waiting to be written? ::shrugs::

comment by Tanya // Tuesday, the 25th of August, 2009, at 9:46 in the evening

Dad, you're on to something. I think I made the mistake of writing too much of myself into my characters—I split myself in thirds and made each part of me one of the three central characters. Now I'm a different me but they're the same them. I need to teach myself to hear their voices in my head rather than just my own, because I don't talk like them anymore.

comment by Martin // Tuesday, the 25th of August, 2009, at 10:24 in the evening

Seconded. Strongly. I hope you find their voices.

I still have fsweeney iii.rtf back here, you know, and I'm still damn fond of it, and would love to see you get to the version you want random strangers to find out in the wide world.

comment by Mike // Tuesday, the 25th of August, 2009, at 10:49 in the evening

Second what Mike said.

comment by Tania // Wednesday, the 26th of August, 2009, at 11:55 in the morning

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