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I'm in a weird mood right now. I've been wandering around the apartment randomly singing... yes, singing... the words "Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn." They actually harmonize quite well.
I'm not sure why I'm singing "Yes, Cthulhu Dreams." I didn't actually realize I was doing it for a bit, till I started varying the tune I was singing it to. Maybe it's because I've been doing a lot of reading on writing fiction (especially horror) recently, including reading some of the works of Lovecraft to get more of a feel for how he wrote them than what he wrote about. Strange, though, nothing I've been reading has had those words in it. And why would I start singing it of all things?
On the other hand, I feel like my writing itself is progressing very nicely, though ironically I haven't really sat down and written a full scene yet. I keep going over ideas and plotting events and characters out. Trying to really get a sense of where I want to go with this story. What premise I want it to reflect. How I want to tie it all together. A story is more than just the motivations of individual characters interacting, there's an overall theme to it as well. Or, sometimes, themes. Take Star Wars, for example. You have Luke and Obi-Wan and Yoda and Darth Vader and all... but if you strip them all away, you find that they're just props being used to explore something deeper than anything found in the plot itself. Good versus evil. The little guy not being someone to underestimate. A good heart being one of the strongest things in the universe. These are some of the themes that Star Wars explores through the characters and events in it. These themes are, in many ways, what gives the story with all its myriad twists and turns a sense of unity and completeness. I think, too, it might also be part of what makes the three new movies feel off... they're part of the back-story, and as such did not need to adhere to the themes found within the first three. They're movies of good versus evil where sometimes the little guy is consumed by the vast forces of the universe he moves within, and where a good heart can be poisoned by fear and anger and hate. These are valid themes too, but they create a disparity between the two sets of movies that makes it very hard to perceive them as one complete story. They feel very much like Frankenstein's monster... patched roughly together and lacking the aesthetic beauty that the parts, taken separately, may have possessed.
There are also some gaps in the plot that you really only notice after the two sets of movies are pieced together. The scene with Yoda on Dagobah, for instance. He won't train Luke, and states that he will keep his own counsel on who to train. But he rapidly gives in to Obi-Wan's gentle urging. That doesn't make sense after we have seen that he also wouldn't train Anakin. If Anakin became Vader because he was trained when he should not have been, wouldn't that have strengthened Yoda's resolve not to train Luke? Nothing Obi-Wan said would seem to be sufficient to convince him to change his mind, in light of their shared history and the last time they faced the same choice. Nor does it make sense for Obi-Wan to so quickly move to train Luke when he openly states he made the wrong choice in training Anakin in the first place. These actions become Deus ex machina change-of-hearts when seen in the context of the back-story. We learn that these characters changed their positions, not because they were motivated to do so, but because the author needed them to for the story to progress.
I'm working to figure out my story's themes, as well as the motivations of individual characters. For the deep fae, especially, this has been difficult. As has finding a good balance between the protagonist's abilities and the antagonist's. I've been envisioning a half-fae raised as a human, with little knowledge of his real nature, as the protagonist and one of the fae as the antagonist, but the disparity in their abilities has made it difficult to create tension or properly give them each a chance to defeat the other. I think I might be able to compensate for that by giving the fae more human goals... perhaps simply to have her son love her. Which will be difficult, since he doesn't know that she's still alive let alone a fae, plus hates her memory for leaving them (whether abandonment or a faked death, I haven't figured out yet.) For his part, he just wants to forget about her. Haven't figured out the father's motivation yet. Toyed briefly with introducing another character, a brother who didn't hate the mother's memory and wanted to reconcile with her, but it didn't fit the mood and seemed derivative of other works.
Much to think on, at any rate.
I'm not sure why I'm singing "Yes, Cthulhu Dreams." I didn't actually realize I was doing it for a bit, till I started varying the tune I was singing it to. Maybe it's because I've been doing a lot of reading on writing fiction (especially horror) recently, including reading some of the works of Lovecraft to get more of a feel for how he wrote them than what he wrote about. Strange, though, nothing I've been reading has had those words in it. And why would I start singing it of all things?
On the other hand, I feel like my writing itself is progressing very nicely, though ironically I haven't really sat down and written a full scene yet. I keep going over ideas and plotting events and characters out. Trying to really get a sense of where I want to go with this story. What premise I want it to reflect. How I want to tie it all together. A story is more than just the motivations of individual characters interacting, there's an overall theme to it as well. Or, sometimes, themes. Take Star Wars, for example. You have Luke and Obi-Wan and Yoda and Darth Vader and all... but if you strip them all away, you find that they're just props being used to explore something deeper than anything found in the plot itself. Good versus evil. The little guy not being someone to underestimate. A good heart being one of the strongest things in the universe. These are some of the themes that Star Wars explores through the characters and events in it. These themes are, in many ways, what gives the story with all its myriad twists and turns a sense of unity and completeness. I think, too, it might also be part of what makes the three new movies feel off... they're part of the back-story, and as such did not need to adhere to the themes found within the first three. They're movies of good versus evil where sometimes the little guy is consumed by the vast forces of the universe he moves within, and where a good heart can be poisoned by fear and anger and hate. These are valid themes too, but they create a disparity between the two sets of movies that makes it very hard to perceive them as one complete story. They feel very much like Frankenstein's monster... patched roughly together and lacking the aesthetic beauty that the parts, taken separately, may have possessed.
There are also some gaps in the plot that you really only notice after the two sets of movies are pieced together. The scene with Yoda on Dagobah, for instance. He won't train Luke, and states that he will keep his own counsel on who to train. But he rapidly gives in to Obi-Wan's gentle urging. That doesn't make sense after we have seen that he also wouldn't train Anakin. If Anakin became Vader because he was trained when he should not have been, wouldn't that have strengthened Yoda's resolve not to train Luke? Nothing Obi-Wan said would seem to be sufficient to convince him to change his mind, in light of their shared history and the last time they faced the same choice. Nor does it make sense for Obi-Wan to so quickly move to train Luke when he openly states he made the wrong choice in training Anakin in the first place. These actions become Deus ex machina change-of-hearts when seen in the context of the back-story. We learn that these characters changed their positions, not because they were motivated to do so, but because the author needed them to for the story to progress.
I'm working to figure out my story's themes, as well as the motivations of individual characters. For the deep fae, especially, this has been difficult. As has finding a good balance between the protagonist's abilities and the antagonist's. I've been envisioning a half-fae raised as a human, with little knowledge of his real nature, as the protagonist and one of the fae as the antagonist, but the disparity in their abilities has made it difficult to create tension or properly give them each a chance to defeat the other. I think I might be able to compensate for that by giving the fae more human goals... perhaps simply to have her son love her. Which will be difficult, since he doesn't know that she's still alive let alone a fae, plus hates her memory for leaving them (whether abandonment or a faked death, I haven't figured out yet.) For his part, he just wants to forget about her. Haven't figured out the father's motivation yet. Toyed briefly with introducing another character, a brother who didn't hate the mother's memory and wanted to reconcile with her, but it didn't fit the mood and seemed derivative of other works.
Much to think on, at any rate.
