Structure, Smucture

Tonight I am talking about story structure at my writer's group. The thought that I am giving anyone instruction on writing is a wee bit frightening.

But it is also more than a wee bit sobering. I have been reminded by the preparation for my lesson that the real reason I haven't sent my novel out isn't the writing, it's the plot. I do have a great story. The plot, not so much. It really needs to be pulled apart and put back together again in a very different shape. There are multiple bad spots.

Like I'm putting the characters somewhere, or preventing them from going there, just for my convenience. But it feels fake and I know it is and they know it is and we're all looking at each other going, "This isn't going to work."

They're stomping for their trailers. "Let us know when you've got it worked out."

Truth be told, I'm tired of working on it, but this is the only project I've had for so long, I really don't know what to do with myself. I had another idea thrown out to me that I love, a collaboration, but that person is too busy right now to get started. So I'm going to have to come up with something all by my lonesome.

Sigh. I'm not an idea person. I don't walk around looking at the world as a thousand potential stories. But if you give me a story, I can come up with a thousand potential angles.

How do you come up with stories? And what do you do when you feel burned out on one?

Or does that never happen?

I swear, I didn't know it was "The Cave"!

When I posted last about the song that one of Betsy's characters sang to Marenya - the one that made me dissolve into weeping over my laptop - I didn't know it was "The Cave" by Mumford & Sons. I'd never heard of them until yesterday. Now, of course, I'm playing it over and over.

I think it so cool. Betsy's characters - twins Aidan and Kaelin - have such a raw, gut-ripping dynamic, that just knowing their situation and how it affects Aidan, then throwing in a few well-crafted song lyrics with no music whatsoever in my head, tore my heart out. And the way Betsy did it on the thread was just awesome. (Kaelin is undercover as a rogue demon in order to get close enough to the dominus Lorcan to kill him for torturing Aidan, but Kaelin is losing his soul in the process.)

Marenya is trying very hard to figure out what to do to help Aidan cope with the loss of his twin, and Marc, one of Aidans cousins and sworn guards, sings her a song about them. The really sweet thing is that Marenya doesn't get it that she's in danger. She's only thinking about Aidan because he's so obviously in over his head. She thinks Marc is just being sweet, not that he's her bodyguard. But I guess she'll have to figure it out pretty soon.

As Betsy says, "This is seriously nuts. My stomach's in knots." "These people aren't REAL." (to read the scene, go here and start with Aidan's commment @ 5:45 pm. He is about to speak to Faldur about taking Marenya away from him, and is given a vision of an alternate eternity than being in Hell, which is the destiny of all the demons in Sentinel unless they can defeat the demon Asmodai who made them. The contrast between the two eternities - Aidan and Marenya's - brings home even more poignantly Kaelin's tragic self-destruction for the sake of revenge.

Remember folks, this stuff is not planned! It just kinda happens as we write it. We might say, "Marenya needs to figure out she's in danger" but exactly how it plays out is all spontaneous. With some really funny bumps in the road, too.

(Yes, I know I have to get back to real life soon. As soon as these meds wear off, I'll be my usual business-like self, I promise.)