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osprey_archerIs anyone else doing NaNoWriMo? I'm about a day behind on my words because I only settled which idea to write on the evening of the first, but so far the writing is going well, although as generally happens at this point in the writing process it feels very disjointed.
The book seems to be falling into that structure that I've found terribly frustrating in other books, where you have two parallel timelines - one in the present and one from the past which explains how you got to this unfortunate point in the present, often with ominous rumblings about The Incident which will not be unveiled until near the end of the book and is therefore almost inevitably anticlimactic.
The Incident in this case is an exorcism that went wrong, resulting in the suicide of the exorcisee (is that a word? the possessed person?), and that basic fact is established in the very first chapter. Hopefully that will keep this structure from being too frustrating.
Maybe I should consider lumping most of the flashbacks together in one big section, though. Aaaaagh, I probably don't actually need the chapter about How Kat Met Charlotte and Valencia, dagnabbit, and I really liked that chapter. Well, I don't have to make final decisions about cutting it just yet.
I'm also having lots of fun with the world-building! I'm thinking that the world is quite a lot like ours, only exorcism is very slightly more respectable - but still a fringy sort of thing. I've been thinking what sort of symptoms demonic possession might have that would make it clear that it's not some other non-occult mental illness (although I'm thinking it would often be comorbid with other mental illnesses, and probably there's argument in the parts of the psychiatric community that do believe in possession exactly how it ought to be classified should they ever get it in the DSM) -
Sorry, where was I? Symptoms of demonic possession. The problem is that I can't make them too lurid or else all the medical professionals who don't believe in possession will look like total idiots. If a possessed person's head is spinning like a top on her neck, then even the most skeptical of skeptics would have to admit something's up, right?
So I've been thinking about the demonic as a destructive force, and also about the devil as the father of lies and illusion, and how one might distinguish demonically mediated antisocial behavior from the more usual kind. I'm still on the beginning stages of that, though.
The book seems to be falling into that structure that I've found terribly frustrating in other books, where you have two parallel timelines - one in the present and one from the past which explains how you got to this unfortunate point in the present, often with ominous rumblings about The Incident which will not be unveiled until near the end of the book and is therefore almost inevitably anticlimactic.
The Incident in this case is an exorcism that went wrong, resulting in the suicide of the exorcisee (is that a word? the possessed person?), and that basic fact is established in the very first chapter. Hopefully that will keep this structure from being too frustrating.
Maybe I should consider lumping most of the flashbacks together in one big section, though. Aaaaagh, I probably don't actually need the chapter about How Kat Met Charlotte and Valencia, dagnabbit, and I really liked that chapter. Well, I don't have to make final decisions about cutting it just yet.
I'm also having lots of fun with the world-building! I'm thinking that the world is quite a lot like ours, only exorcism is very slightly more respectable - but still a fringy sort of thing. I've been thinking what sort of symptoms demonic possession might have that would make it clear that it's not some other non-occult mental illness (although I'm thinking it would often be comorbid with other mental illnesses, and probably there's argument in the parts of the psychiatric community that do believe in possession exactly how it ought to be classified should they ever get it in the DSM) -
Sorry, where was I? Symptoms of demonic possession. The problem is that I can't make them too lurid or else all the medical professionals who don't believe in possession will look like total idiots. If a possessed person's head is spinning like a top on her neck, then even the most skeptical of skeptics would have to admit something's up, right?
So I've been thinking about the demonic as a destructive force, and also about the devil as the father of lies and illusion, and how one might distinguish demonically mediated antisocial behavior from the more usual kind. I'm still on the beginning stages of that, though.
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Date: 2016-11-07 01:36 pm (UTC)You say the world is very like ours--is it equivalent technologically to ours (cars and Internet and things)?
I'm not doing Nano, just chugging along in the same old way. Right now I'm taking a break from both my novel and the short story I've mentioned to you* to write a shorter short story about duplication.
*The decommissioned god story. I'm realizing I have to plot out for myself exactly what happened at XX point in the distant past and then figure out how to reveal that stuff so it's not totally predictable and not an unexpected and flabbergasting info dump.
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Date: 2016-11-08 01:09 pm (UTC)Ooooh, I liked your post about the duplication dreams! I hope that makes a good short story.
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Date: 2016-11-07 07:09 pm (UTC)Your world-building does sound pretty fascinating to me. :-)
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Date: 2016-11-08 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-08 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-07 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-08 01:08 pm (UTC)I'm still contemplating the structure. I'm thinking maybe I should have the flashback to the Exorcism That Went Wrong right after the first couple of chapters: I think it makes more sense for the character to be thinking about the specific thing that got them in this mess, rather than remembering how she met her exorcist friends months and months before the Exorcism of Doom.