Sunday, October 28, 2012

New Story

About my existing novel, well that's all still up in the air. The pity party is over, was over pretty quickly, because my new story, the one about Beryl and her brother, is starting to congeal in my head.  I know, that makes me sound as if I have a head full of gelatin, but that is the way I see it, and it's pretty close to the truth.

I still don't know how the story will end, because my characters will decide that.  But the characters are becoming three-dimensional, even Mr. Yet-to-be-Named.

Beryl's life story is developing before my very eyes, or should I say, inside my head.

The real question is how I will reveal the back story. I just finished Gillian Flynn's "Dark Places".  I found the book compelling, even though as the protagonists says in the first chapter she's not very likable.  In "Dark Places", Flynn gave us two story lines that merge in the end.  One of the story lines provides the backstory, and even though it's multiple chapters and told from multiple POVs, the backstory covers only one day.  I won't give away the plot.  It's worth reading.

My story is a little more complicated in that I also have to not only introduce backstory, but I also have to introduce Beryl's alternate personalities. I haven't decide if they will all have their own POV chapters, or if we'll see them through the eyes of others, like Mr. Yet-to-be-Named.  I love a good puzzle, which is probably why I end up writing stories that are challenging.  Challenging for me at least. 

Right now I'm reading Haruki Murakami's "1Q84".  The structure is very much the same, two story lines being told in parallel.  His stories are so entertaining, but I can't really say why.  I love how, in this story, when one character learns something, it suddenly becomes apparent in the other character's story line.  I'm not really doing a good job of describing it, but I've found it enjoyable to stumble across these parallels between his two characters.  It's like an Easter egg hunt, or a nice little surprise that you've learned to expect.

So there's lots of work to be done.  And I've set a goal to finish this novel by January 1st, 2014,  a little more than one year from now. 

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