It’s another Open Mike! Talk amongst yourselves about whatever you want–news, WIPs, questions, complaints, what gets you going, what gets you stuck, whatever…
It’s another Open Mike! Talk amongst yourselves about whatever you want–news, WIPs, questions, complaints, what gets you going, what gets you stuck, whatever…
I finished the first draft of the webcomic script I’ve been working on since August of 2023! Now I’m letting it sit for a little while before doing some editing.
Sylvie’s Escape is out! It escaped!
More locations here!
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/release-day-for-sylvies-escape
And in fact, it went even more widely than that — you can check your favorite vendor!
Congratulations!
I have discovered sometimes characters don’t cooperate. In that I wanted to write a short story about this novel’s secondary character’s personal life and can’t. Because if you don’t see him in his professional life, working, his personal life decisions don’t make sense. His entire mode is managing people and variables constantly and it doesn’t turn off, which makes it offputting if you only see him using it in his personal relationships.
A story shelved for now.
I feel like Snoopy.
I’ve self-published a ton after having two of my earliest works published, and I have to say there’s nothing to beat the gratification of having stuff accepted to be put in print.
But one advantage to self-publishing struck me again yesterday. I created a simple illustration to put in my latest work, because a picture says a thousand proverbs and all that.
It’s nice being able to add a prefatory poem, or an appendix, or however many maps I want. And I enjoy creating them all, too. So there’s that.
I have written a fair hunk of book 3 despite the intense awareness that I need to fix missing parts of book 2 instead. But that’s all I have energy for. The book 3 material is wildly out of internal order, too, and at least one piece is obviously going to have to be rewritten. It was worth doing, it got me a lot of characterizations–Melody and Zara are discussing which of their fellow-students to invite into their conspiracy–but now that I have a chapter and a half of student interactions prior to that, they naturally know a lot more!
I have figured out that the enigmatic guy is an *ex* EarthGov Investigations agent, but not what he’s doing (or who he works for) since then. He is not very forthcoming at all. I did get a sudden insight into his personality, though. I met a gamer online who was far stronger than he was “supposed” to be, thrashed me soundly, and then wanted to coach me. That weird interaction stuck in my head and suddenly attached itself to Enigmatic Guy, where it fits to a T.
Oh I do also have a technical question actually. I have written a book where chapters of a woman’s story alternate with chapters of her dreams of the creepy weird forest. In the forest dreams, she sees through the eyes (or feelers or tentacles or whatever) of different forest creatures. I’ve gotten feedback that the dreams, while cool, don’t maintain the main story’s tension and are very bad for pacing.
I LOVE the dreams and want to leave them in – they parallel the main storyline in some ways, some tidbits become relevant later to the woman’s life, but mainly I just think it’s so fun to see this ecosystem from different perspectives. So how can I make them relevant to the main story?
Trying to think through it analytically, they could affect:
– atmosphere (this is currently the only thing they do and it’s not enough)
– plot
– character
So for plot, maybe the forest dreams could introduce threats in a way where it’s obvious they’re being set up to enter the woman’s life, maintaining tension. Or they could provide more context (and thus more tension?) for threats already suggested in her life.
For character… I’m struggling with this. She should think about the dreams more in her waking life and they should impact her fears and wishes. But… what does that even look like?
I don’t know, I feel like I’m hitting my weakest point with this part of the edit. Structure, pacing, plot, character, all my weakest points together… (isn’t that everything? you might ask. Your weak point is everything? No! There’s also prose, worldbuilding, description, atmosphere. At least this has oodles of atmosphere.)
This advice might not work because I haven’t read the book, but I’m thinking that since dreams are from her own subconscious, you could play with things that happen in the main storyline in interesting ways. Like if there is a character that isn’t trustworthy, she could not see it in real life, but her subconscious knows and they appear in the dreams to be doing something harmful. Structure-wise, it might be cool if the dreams change from beginning to end, like getting more and more real until they are invading her waking life. Or the opposite, less real as she gets stronger and pushes them out.
What is the intention of the forest creatures? Trying to help or hurt her? Or not aware of her at all?
Does she remember everything in the dreams? That could create some tension as she’s trying to figure out the meaning or things are happening in her real life that reminds her of a dream thing. Or if she doesn’t remember and the reader knows more than her, that could create a different kind of tension, like a scary movie where the viewers know where the killer is hiding, but the character doesn’t.
I love the idea of a creepy, atmospheric forest, this sounds really good!
Also, I think you’re already on to something here:
“I LOVE the dreams and want to leave them in – they parallel the main storyline in some ways, some tidbits become relevant later to the woman’s life, but mainly I just think it’s so fun to see this ecosystem from different perspectives.”
If readers are seeing the dream vignettes as interfering with the story, then maybe you can make the parallels more explicit and play up the relevance to the woman’s life…and maybe enjoy the different perspectives yourself, and not play them up too much. It sounds like not that many readers will enjoy that as much.
I agree about the creepy atmosphere! Don’t give up!
It occurs to me that if readers think the dreams are interfering with pacing, it may be because they dreams need their own “main character” with his/her/its own arc. If the dreams are just dreams, then that character would probably represent the protagonist (whether she’s seeing through fail eyes or not). If the dreams are visions of another reality, then the protagonist could be either sympathetic to the creature-main-character and rooting for him/her/it to succeed in that arc, or repelled by the creature and hoping they fail.
There’s lots of possibilities. It really depends on what kind of story Rose wants to tell–whether it’s something like Marge Percy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, which is more literary and thus unclear whether the main character is imagining things, or like Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans where two completely different storylines separated by 400 years are knit together by the fairy tale they’re both retelling.
Get a beta reader and ask whether the parallels are strong enough?
You’re right–atmosphere alone isn’t enough to justify leaving the dreams in. They need to be relevant to the story you want to tell, not just scenes you love. If your backbrain is telling you they really need to be there, you have to figure out WHY they need to be there, and then punch up whatever the link is. Are the dreams actually visions of a real place, or are they truly just dreams that represent the protagonist’s emotions and how she processes what’s been happening to her? Are the dreams actually their own story, one that can be separated from this one? If not, why not? If you CAN separate them, what happens to the protagonist’s story? What’s missing, besides atmosphere? Are the dreams relevant to the main storyline’s theme? If the dreams are visions, is there any possibility that something could cross over into the protagonist’s real world?
You may need to underline the links between the dreams. Things like the main character noticing that somebody is wearing a sweater the same color as a predator’s fur from the dream, and then having the sweater-wearing character do something villainous. Or the dreams may need their own plot arc, one that either parallels and/or reacts to the main character’s decisions (e.g., a new coworker gets hired at her job, and a new creature appears in the forest; or, she has a fight with her boyfriend and the next night one of the creatures tries to kill a different one). The dreams could provide clues or warnings that the protagonist can use in the real world. Or she might worry that something is going to come out of the dreams into her real life, or be afraid she’s going crazy.
If you’ve already got this kind of parallel/reaction, then either the parallels need to be stronger, or you need different beta readers (beta reader problems happen when your betas are really familiar with one kind of story, but you’re writing in a different one. It’s really common when a science fiction writer has beta readers who only read mainstream and literary fiction (and vice versa).
You say you’ve had feedback that the dreams interfere with pacing, but do you agree with this assessment? Sometimes, you have to ignore advice and go with what you feel is right.
On the other hand, if you get the same criticism from a number of people people, it’s probably best you heed it.
This is all very helpful advice, thanks!!
Can you show that the experiences in the dream are changing the protagonist in some way? Can she take on some characteristics of the creatures she is dreaming about, for good or ill? Does she notice these dreams? How does she feel about them? Does it occur to her that they may be dangerous, or valuable? How does she feel about the forest in waking life?–does she want to go there, is she afraid of it, does she think about it a lot, or try to avoid doing so?
You could also get a creepy effect if she doesn’t think about the dreams at all, but the reader can see the effect they’re having on her.
Could the forest creatures show up in small ways in person? I’m thinking of a spider that crawls across her wrist, and she would have expected to be afraid of spiders but she’s not afraid of this one, and wonders why.