Icon by Peg Kerr Ihinger
It’s another open mic/mike week! Feel free to continue any discussions from previous posts, ask for better explanations or clarification, come up with whole new questions, or just catch everyone up on your latest news.
I’m trying to get the house and cats set up so I can go to Mythcon (August 2-5) without things falling apart (a likely possibility, as I have various home repairs in progress, which of course won’t be finished by convention time).
I’m grinding through the last 20-25% of the final (I hope) revision of The Long Novel That Has Taken So Very Long. I’m feeling tempted to hire a copy-editor for this one, but I’m also feeling tempted to just kick it out the door once this revision pass is done.
And there are also those short stories, waif-like with wide-eyed silent begging for endings. And the next novel, not on the back burner, but stuck back in the deep freeze.
Trying to grind through two revisions. Discovered one has a scene flipflopping points of view and it’s the only one in the story
I think the WIP ends on the scene where Kay pitches her plan for avoiding interspecies war to the Terran military officials.
I got some friends to write lists of questions the military guys would have. Very useful in clarifying my thinking. But I am beginning to suspect that writing this scene out as it happened would be a pacing and emphasis disaster, and it has to be narrative summary. Told in detail, it’s opening-up material rather than ending material.
The main thing I have to establish is that Kay is doing this. She’s been a pawn in others’ games all story long: now she is a player. This is true whether or not the Terran military decides to go along with her plan, which is why (I think!) the story ends here.
I also have a scene from a follow-on story about a main alien character from this story and how she/it/they got to where we meet them. That would be a story with no humans in it, which is proving to be quite a challenge.
Using “it” for the protag is awkward and feels distancing. I think of this character as “she,” but there’s no way it would think of itself that way: it’s ungendered and non-reproductive. And “they,” which is accurate, is also very weird in practice.
Furthermore, it doesn’t have a name, which is also inconvenient. Kay calls it “Shipmaster,” because Kay is more or less human and names things. It never needed one before that. It has an identifiable mental signature if someone needs to refer to it, or call it. Also I can’t call it Shipmaster, because this is the story of how it became that.
I am toying with using a title instead. It’s the only one of its caste on the ship, so it could be “the broodmaster” or something of that kind (still fussing with the caste names). When it eventually orders another broodmaster spawned, then it gets to have a name, I guess?
Excited about this, though. As the story opens it has lived 25 years on-world and 10 years in near orbit, as part of a massive hive-mind. In scene 1 that hive-mind has sent it to build a remote space station, *out of contact range.* And it is saying to itself, in surprise, “I.”
–And realizing after a while that this is a trip of years, and it is going to be *bored.* I suspect it will eventually resort to spawning other bright bugs, for someone to talk to; and then there will be politics, and conflict.
My housemate suggested writing in first person so as not to need a name or a third-person pronoun. Not sure about that, though. I don’t think its “I” is very well developed at the start, for obvious reasons, and first person is going to be devilish for depicting that. (Cool if it can be pulled off, but I’m really not sure.)
Writing in first person plural, while accurate, seems absurdly gimmicky!
Unsolicited ideas:
In the Lensman series that I’m now rereading, Doc Smith made the point that the “names” of certain sufficiently-advanced aliens were actually mental symbols. Maybe you could do something similar here, except to make the symbol something short and unpronounceable. So your alien character might have mental-symbol-names like Dgwk or R#vqr. Or something similar but completely different.
A first-person-plural point of view might be gimmicky, but still a lot less so that the second-person POV that I’ve occasionally encountered (and learned to avoid). Also a lot less gimmicky to my ear than a coined pronoun like *gtst* used for certain aliens in the Pride of Chanur series.
First-person-plural is a POV that causes me to think “Hmm that just might work” rather than “Stupid silly gimmick!”
When you finish these projects, I want to know how to find them so I can read them! They seem so fun!
Aww, thanks!
I could use a first-reader, actually, if you’re interested. You can contact me at mkkuhner4 at gmail dot com.
I’ve been a writing fiend since 2013, maybe 2009. Writing every day, even when I was still working, and writing things up there five days a week. Write write write. Finish finish finish. It was fun.
For the last month, I’ve got five barely started projects, and I’m writing a hundred words here, a couple hundred there…or none at all.
A month ago we had to put down our dog, my faithful companion through two surgeries and all the convalescing. The one always ready to jump up and see what Daddy was doing, but would leave me to write when I was writing. She was the Best Girl.
Now I don’t feel like doing much.
This too shall pass, and it certainly won’t hurt me to take a break for once after all these years…but I miss her.
Ah, I’m sorry for your loss. Hopefully you can get back on your writing feet soon! I know that for me, writing is how I deal with stressful moments, so it’s always tough when the words won’t flow and wrting doesn’t sound appealing.
Thank you very kindly indeed.
Writing that little comment actually seemed to help some. Putting thoughts into words? Embracing my feelings? I don’t know.
But I’ve written a couple thousand words the last couple of days, so, well, as sharp-edged a hole as death leaves in your life, time does dull those edges. I’m getting there.
That’s good to hear!