McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

What a day, I've another 'help' question like everyone else posting today...

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meg_evonne:
I've always been intrigued with the American Beauty plot sequence....  Scene X, then back to A--> B--> C to X and then to Z. I simply love it and always have. So I tried to use it in the Isis work, but too many people nixed it--so I yanked it. The feedback I got was--it gives away too many clues. Pulling it, I got feedback that I needed the magic up front and since the main character is vanilla human in the beginning that is kinda hard to work. I tried prologue without the main character, showing the parents in full magic at a crucial point where they disappear. It is a scene that was natural and integral as it is the entire set up. That sort of worked, but it begins a 1st person point of view YA with the parents--a huge no no. I finally ended up with a frame front and back that uses the "Fates" in a maybe dream/maybe not dream sequence with some magic that seems to work, still it simply isn't as good for me personally as the Scene K, to A to B etc to Z that I initially constructed.

SO I'm in the new work and I instinctively go for this even more complicated interwoven plot sequence of a forward flash of a major huge fight. I want to interweave this extended fight into sections that are worked through out the entire manuscript until about the 3/4's point.  Again, I love the mix up. I love the hints of what's to come, I love the behind the scene look----but...

One major problem:

I'm watching Damages for the first time, having started to watch it AFTER I settled on the above experiment on the new work. I mean if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, right? I'll just combine it and use it traditionally...

Then I watched several episodes of Damages and I so HAVE TO MANAGE TO DO THIS. YET, I am terrified. I worry that I can't do it justice.

Sorry. Late night muses and self-doubt. I mean in Damages it is done so well, proving that the concept can be so satisfyingly agonizing. So it now longer feels like what I'm doing is an experiment, and now I feel like the structure is the way the book should be. Yet, again, can I do it? I WANT TO BE ABLE TO DO IT. I want to blow people's minds. 

I'm just a duffer for crying out loud...

Hitting the muse wall with a splat, yet I will not give up.  But it's really, really going to personally suck if it doesn't work because I can't manage it. I know it won't be as strong if I don't manage it, especially since the concept was born with the whole idea for the work...

Now, I'm not even making sense.

Share your personal attempts that you really wanted to work out, but they didn't---or maybe they did. Give me some inspiration folks, ok?

Thanks....  Meg

Snowleopard:
Hey Meg - sorry about splatting on the muse wall.
I don't know about inspiration but I do know that you shouldn't compare yourself to anyone else right now.
Everytime you do that you're just gonna come up short.
What is it the Desiderata says - "Always there will be greater or lesser than you...."
Get Black on white as they say - just write without overthinking it.
Words are cheap and you can always edit but you need to have the words to edit them.
The vanilla mortal who isn't has been used a couple of different places.
The Young Harry Potter and one of Barbara Hambly's characters - Rudy - in her Darthwar series.
Both handled in different fashions.

jeno:
I seem to recall someone telling me that Fight Club (the book) started the way you're talking about. Might be worth looking into.

But just remember - Damages is presented in a visual medium. Same with American Beauty. And there are tons of things you can get away with in visual media that are extremely difficult to do in print. A picture single freeze frame is worth a thousand words, etc. Keep trying, but don't fight with yourself to exhaustion if it's just not going to work. Find another way if you need to, like having the opening be some sort of report or documentation instead of straight prose.

Starbeam:
Depending on how close the book is to the movie(I've only seen the movie), Fight Club does do that.  Aside from that, all the instances I can think of are TV/movies.  I kinda want to say Lies of Locke Lamora starts like this, but it's been a really long time since I read that, so I'm not sure if it does or if it just has the flashbacks interspersed through the story.

I'd offer suggestions, but I think my mind's not quite woken up yet.

jeno:
LoLL is all flashbacks.

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