Groundhog Day – with a machete – by Rowena House

This month I restarted the WIP after an enforced break of three months, so this post will honour the spirit of last month’s about the (happily) narrated self by recounting all the useful things that came out of that creative void, while consigning the bits that sucked to forgetfulness.

Good thing, the first: re-reading the first 10K words with fresh eyes.

After three years researching, planning, and drafting, and many more mulling the possibilities of the story, the opening works. MEGA hurrah. We have a solid launch pad in terms of voice, form, and content which, after seemingly endless tinkering, rewriting, and starting again, is progress – and journalist me can stop that eye rolling right now, thank you very much.

Good thing, the second: the main character ‘exists’ outside the specifics of the plot.

Last year’s intensive planning of scenes and sequences driven by the main character’s neuroses have delivered a sufficiently robust outline that it can withstand change. I.e., the emotional and psychological drivers of the story can take the plot wherever it needs to go. Ta, especially, to Story Geek guru Jeff Lyons for that – though, please, Jeff, drop the enneagrams.

Good thing, the third. Darlings to kill? Hand me the machete, mwa-ha-ha. They’re just so 2022. 

Pic: Staples Inn, from C17th witch trial work in progress

Good thing, the fourth. Intuition rules.

For example, certain decisions have been taken without a conscious process. The ‘real’ ghost character, for instance, is gone. Just like that. She’s not my problem any more, just the protagonist’s, and I understand why he believes in her and feel for him. She is as real to him as he is real for me. Like Angelique from The Goose Road is real. Crazy, huh? But true.

Meanwhile, other plot problems have stepped out of the shadows and said, Solve me. Now. Specifically, the kick into Act 2. No matter which way I twisted it, the main character – the person I know – could not step in any self-propelled way into the new world, whatever the rulebook says.

Fair enough, then. Find another route. The antagonist will just have to kick him there instead. And guess what? The story works better for it! Cue more eye rolling, like you didn’t know rules are there to break.

Good thing, the fifth. Some of the stuff that came out of the memory locker makes more sense than what went in last year.

An example. A lot of 2021 (yup, that’s not a typo) was spent – don’t say wasted, this is happy narrative self here – fretting over how to align form, content, and voice. Actually, now I write that I realize it’s not true. I didn’t think of them as a unit. Instead, my experiments with voice were separated conceptually from experiments with form (first person, third, retrospective and framing devices etc) and content (the events to be recounted and the specifics of scenes).

In other words, the what-to-write content, the how-to-put-the-manuscript-together form, and the tone/voice/style of the words had seemed to be different problems.

Now that the opening is finally singing, it’s clear they were harmonies in the same tune. Pieces of a single puzzle. A set of problems only solvable together. [Yeah, yeah. Duh, right? It’s been a tough three months. Anyhow…] Eureka! John Truby’s designing principle pops out of the memory locker as a great planning tool, not just another trick to storytelling I didn’t get.

Here’s what Truby says about the designing principle in The Anatomy of Story: “[it] is abstract; it is the deeper process going on in the story, told in an original way…

“Let’s say you are a writer who wants to show the intimate workings of the Mafia in America, as literally hundreds of screenwriters and novelists have done. If you were really good, you might come up with this designing principle (for The Godfather):

“Use the classic fairy-tale strategy of showing how the youngest of three sons becomes the new ‘king’.”

Yeah, okay, I get it now. Having read the book three times!

To be honest, sifting through all this stuff after a break feels like Groundhog Day, with the half-forgotten only strangely familiar. The slow dawn of recognition is embarrassing. Perhaps our creative selves can get lost in a dark faerie realm where months pass like years. If so, thank goodness for signposts like Truby’s on the route to escape.

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