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Oct. 29th, 2005 02:37 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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lkh_lashoutsLink: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2005/10/yesterday.html
Date: Friday 28 October 2005
Title: "Yesterday"
LKH in italics, as standard.
I'm gonna skip over all the stuff about getting pissed off that Darla intruded on her writerly hot-streak and just focus on this bit:
No, it was do the scene, throw it out. Redo the scene, read it to Jon, have him confirm what I feared, throw it out. I must have redone that next to last scene three, four times, back and forth, back and forth. this choice will change things later in the series. That choice will mean the police will never trust her again. This choice will get Asher executed. That choice will doom us all. This choice is less bad. I wrestled with that scene all day. I did not exercise. I did not eat lunch. I wrestled with the book, and had no idea who was winning.
*headdesk*
I think I just spent ten minutes, sputtering and typing crap just to try and come up with some sort of response that wasn't just mindless, frustrated screaming.
Lady, divorce yourself from your characters. It's okay to love them, but this is totally a hallmark of someone who wuvs them just wayyy too much and doesn't want anything OMG BAD! to happen to them. EVER. And that's right up in the top five things of What Not To Do As A Writer.
What the hell is wrong with having the police never trust her again? It makes for good plot, as she may have to, holy crap - here's the crazy part - deal with it and have to work around/with it in order to be victorious. Or, just get out alive, as there's no rule set in stone that says the good guys always have to win. Granted, right now, it's pretty easy as the bad guys don't even BOTHER to show up in St Louis any more, but hey, as a Team Evil supporter, I live in hope.
What's wrong with Asher being executed? I mean, other than the devestated fangirls everywhere. He's one of the cast I pick to die to bitchslap some reality back into Anita (the other would be Nathaniel) and hell, I even champion the idea that Anita would have to do it herself. It's probably asking for a ton of wangst, but it would do the entire 'verse a whole lot of good.
Skip a bit more going on about how she nearly tore the head off her latest helper - get this, his name is Richard - and you get to this bit:
I could not decide how this scene would play out. If I wrote stand alone books, it would be easy. But with a series this long, with so many books yet to come, decisions in one book can derail plots later on, or make entire story lines mute. So I fought with the scene, and myself.
I fought my desire to get the book done, at almost any cost, against the cost to Anita and her sweeties later on. This cost was too high. This too complicated. This not true to the characters. I fought. I finally beat it into a shape that was close to being done.
First off, I'm amused that apparently there's enough plot in this book that it may well be derailed by this one scene and thus ruin the later books. The many, many, many volumes of later books.
She's already admitted that she's had to use reference books for different sexual positions for this one - the scenes already read as though they're pastede on yea! but sooner or later, she's going to run out of different styles to try. And then what'll happen? She'll have done everything humanly, and inhumanly, possible...will the Ficus be next?!?!
Secondly, not true to the characters? wtf?
I already believe that the original cast has been taken away by the Witness Relocation Program and given alternative identities and these are just decoys. It's that, or the pod-people have really landed and it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers but without the insightful social commentary.
And third, I'm still beating my head against the desk about how much this woman loves her characters and how she doesn't want anything bad to ever happen to them. ARGHGAHHHIG!
The whole Goddess pledge at the end at least reminds me that she hasn't gone as crazy as Anne Rice.
o.0
Date: Friday 28 October 2005
Title: "Yesterday"
LKH in italics, as standard.
I'm gonna skip over all the stuff about getting pissed off that Darla intruded on her writerly hot-streak and just focus on this bit:
No, it was do the scene, throw it out. Redo the scene, read it to Jon, have him confirm what I feared, throw it out. I must have redone that next to last scene three, four times, back and forth, back and forth. this choice will change things later in the series. That choice will mean the police will never trust her again. This choice will get Asher executed. That choice will doom us all. This choice is less bad. I wrestled with that scene all day. I did not exercise. I did not eat lunch. I wrestled with the book, and had no idea who was winning.
*headdesk*
I think I just spent ten minutes, sputtering and typing crap just to try and come up with some sort of response that wasn't just mindless, frustrated screaming.
Lady, divorce yourself from your characters. It's okay to love them, but this is totally a hallmark of someone who wuvs them just wayyy too much and doesn't want anything OMG BAD! to happen to them. EVER. And that's right up in the top five things of What Not To Do As A Writer.
What the hell is wrong with having the police never trust her again? It makes for good plot, as she may have to, holy crap - here's the crazy part - deal with it and have to work around/with it in order to be victorious. Or, just get out alive, as there's no rule set in stone that says the good guys always have to win. Granted, right now, it's pretty easy as the bad guys don't even BOTHER to show up in St Louis any more, but hey, as a Team Evil supporter, I live in hope.
What's wrong with Asher being executed? I mean, other than the devestated fangirls everywhere. He's one of the cast I pick to die to bitchslap some reality back into Anita (the other would be Nathaniel) and hell, I even champion the idea that Anita would have to do it herself. It's probably asking for a ton of wangst, but it would do the entire 'verse a whole lot of good.
Skip a bit more going on about how she nearly tore the head off her latest helper - get this, his name is Richard - and you get to this bit:
I could not decide how this scene would play out. If I wrote stand alone books, it would be easy. But with a series this long, with so many books yet to come, decisions in one book can derail plots later on, or make entire story lines mute. So I fought with the scene, and myself.
I fought my desire to get the book done, at almost any cost, against the cost to Anita and her sweeties later on. This cost was too high. This too complicated. This not true to the characters. I fought. I finally beat it into a shape that was close to being done.
First off, I'm amused that apparently there's enough plot in this book that it may well be derailed by this one scene and thus ruin the later books. The many, many, many volumes of later books.
She's already admitted that she's had to use reference books for different sexual positions for this one - the scenes already read as though they're pastede on yea! but sooner or later, she's going to run out of different styles to try. And then what'll happen? She'll have done everything humanly, and inhumanly, possible...will the Ficus be next?!?!
Secondly, not true to the characters? wtf?
I already believe that the original cast has been taken away by the Witness Relocation Program and given alternative identities and these are just decoys. It's that, or the pod-people have really landed and it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers but without the insightful social commentary.
And third, I'm still beating my head against the desk about how much this woman loves her characters and how she doesn't want anything bad to ever happen to them. ARGHGAHHHIG!
The whole Goddess pledge at the end at least reminds me that she hasn't gone as crazy as Anne Rice.
o.0
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 04:14 am (UTC)whoa....
no subject
Date: 2005-10-29 12:28 pm (UTC)But the sad thing? I'd read the Kid!Jesus book if it promised porn.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-30 07:31 am (UTC)oh, snap!
*hums* I'm going to hell!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-30 11:59 am (UTC)It'd rank right up there with Passion of the Christ being a gay BDSM movie.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-31 04:28 am (UTC)