The Snowflake

Good morning, folks. It's been a while. I've been working on my outline for Identity, which, in retrospect, I realize I haven't said much about, only mentioned obliquely. What I used to outline Echoes as an experiment was Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method, a ten-step process to fleshing out a novel. Overall, I think the process is sound, but I did have to adapt it somewhat to my structural style. As I've mentioned, I write each chapter like it's own story, a structure influenced by my experience with Babylon 5, an epic television series where most episodes moved forward an overall plot yet still managed to be stories that could be understood (to varying degrees) on their own. His Dark Materials is what got me writing, but Babylon 5 has been the basic model on which I base my novels.

For my part, I think the structure has some advantages. It means the plot is fast, as each chapter brings about a new conflict (or an extension of an old one). Furthermore, each chapter has some stand-alone quality that is very well-suited to the serial nature of work-in-progress posting. The Snowflake Method doesn't naturally accommodate this structure, though. I found with Echoes that I was stuck on chapter two (yes, out of twenty) with a chapter outline that simply wasn't well-developed, couldn't stand on its own. In part, that was my fault, not realizing what was needed to truly structure the chapter, but at the same time, I grew comfortable with re-outlining each chapter as I came to it. Even then, however, it wasn't a perfect process: I wrote three or four outlines for chapter twenty, none of them satisfactory really until in the end I kind of winged it and got through with Echoes at last. Maybe in that sense outlining isn't going to be a perfect process anyway, something that must be iterated to really arrive at a story. Who knows.

But, I do recommend the Snowflake Method. Right now I'm on the "one-page outline" stage, where you take a book and outline it in paragraphs. I've expanded it somewhat, for this is to be a trilogy, so it's really going to be three pages. And there are more steps beyond that, of course. It's all a process of going forward.

So what's Identity all about, anyway? Well, without giving too much away, it's a Ranma 1/2 continuation story. I've long thought that the end of the manga provides a great opportunity to explore changing relationships and emotions in the characters, the consequences of what happened at Jusenkyou and the failed wedding. Ranma, at least, has admitted to himself how he feels about Akane, and she surely thinks he's admitted it to her, too. Shampoo and Ukyou must naturally see a strengthening relationship there, and that would be ample cause for much more desperate attempts to win Ranma back. And the sobering effect of seeing someone you love nearly die in your arms shouldn't be understated, either. I think the change in character dynamics is key.

At the same time, Identity introduces new characters, foils for the emotional and psychological issues that the main cast has, issues that, while humorous, are also tragic in their own way. Identity is a dark story, about the need for love that we all have, the terrible consequences when that need overshadows all else, and the insecurities that cripple us, especially, we think, in the eyes of the ones we love. I can't wait to write this story, for though I've hit some road blocks in outlining it and considered working on something else until those cleared, I've known since I wrote Glimpse that this is the story I want to write next, without a doubt. It's going to be a blast to do.

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It's done.

Chapter 20: Being Human, on FFN, with an epilogue and an afterword also posted as well.

I've said enough in the afterword about the whole experience. I will just say here that I'm immensely gratified to have finished Echoes and will be looking forward to finishing my outline and getting to work on Identity or maybe even Eclipse. It's a strange feeling to finish a long story like this one; I remember the immense relief I felt when I finished The Blind Illusions, my first trilogy (which I intend to completely throw away and rewrite, I might add), and the same catharsis from finishing Nicholas Torrence, my second (well, fourth) novel, the first one I've seriously considered publishing. This sojourn into fanfiction has been a fascinating one, and I still have stories to tell, but I still see it as merely a diversion, a way to improve myself on the way back to original work. For now, though, I am satisfied. For a day, and a day only, I can rest.

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Nearing Completion

Echoes 20 is done. The epilogue is done. The afterword has some things I want to add, and this all needs to be edited, but...it's done.

I hope to have this up by Saturday.

I still kind of need a title, though.

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Angels & Demons

First, the Echoes progress report: still working. Fourth act now, but I also went ahead and wrote the epilogue, which means I'm...close. Maybe by the end of the week. If I can get this one difficult part out of the way, maybe sooner than that, even. I will have to finish writing the second afterword, however.

Now, in my continuing reviews of movies I see, I discuss Angels & Demons. And no, I don't care for ampersands.

I'm a physicist by trade, you might say, so immediately a plot that revolves around an antimatter bomb gets my attention. Of course, this near-opening scene involving scientists at the LHC is full of hogwash and inaccuracy. First, antimatter is terribly difficult to produce in large (that is, macroscopic) quantities, certainly not enough for three vials or tubes or what have you. Second, while it would be magnetically contained, it wouldn't be conveniently portable for your terrorism needs. But I digress somewhat; that's a weakness of Brown's book more than the movie. The movie has enough problems on its own.

I will say that, like the other movies I criticize, I generally enjoyed the film, but I also wish to learn from the mistakes of filmmakers and the weaknesses in their presentations to improve my own writing. Thus, every time a filmmaker chooses to forgo logic and consistency for plot or aesthetic reasons, we should judge whether the choice is effective, reasonable, and moreover, not distracting in and of itself. There are several such choices in this movie, and I shall break them down in detail.

A recurring element most people will notice is timing. The four cardinals will be executed on the hour from 7 to 11, and to bomb will go off at 12 midnight. Fair enough, we can accept that. What must be scrutinized, however, is how Langdon and everyone else is always conveniently late. It's a cheap tactic to build tension, and it also puts into question everyone's ability to do a task. Just once, I would've liked to see Langdon arrive half an hour early at the right scene, only to be waylaid or entangled in order to buy time for the execution. I know well the temptation to fudge timing to make things work on a dramatic level, but it has to be done with care, in a way that timing coincidences merely clean up the story. As it is, this seems a cop-out in this movie, that Brown (or Howard) wanted to make things happen a specific way in spite of the characters, as a way to manipulate the audience.

Perhaps the most audience-manipulating tactic of all, however, is the misdirection with the Camerlengo, Father McKenna, and Commander Richter of the Swiss Guard. All along, Richter has been setup as the villain behind it all, taking the journals, perhaps cutting power to the archives to kill Langdon with low oxygen (another point I would debate; rate of oxygen consumption in a room like that does not strike me as plausible). Then we find out the father is the villain instead (which has been established well, I will say, both for his speech in the Sistene Chapel to the College of Cardinals and his previous remarks about the Higgs boson, which in turn made me laugh every time they called it the "God" particle; nobody calls it that), but this leaves dangling questions. Why does Richter wish to stop Langdon from saving the last cardinal? Why does he take the journals and not bring Vittoria in on the father's duplicity right then and there? If Richter didn't cut the power to the archive at that specific moment to kill Langdon, is it just a coincidence, as we are led to believe was a cover? Richter's actions, I think, are not consistent with a good guy with good intentions, even if Father McKenna's are consistent with a villain after all (though I don't believe he could've foreseen election to the papacy--that, at best, could've been only a bonus; as an ideologue, McKenna could only have hoped to galvanize the cardinals into a reaction against science, nothing more).

Overall, though, an enjoyable way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

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Back from vacation

I'm back from vacation in Florida, just yesterday now. I learned how to ride a bike (and fell off one the day before we left). We ate like kings without breaking the bank, either, as the three families rotated cooking duties. All in all, a relaxing trip.

My work on the last chapter of Echoes continues, however. To give some perspective, I now have three different drafts of the chapter, all over 7000 words (though most of them have some shared content), and none of them are finished. I do think I'll finish the current draft I'm working on--I'm stuck on the fourth act--but it'll be a few days before I've completed it, let alone proofread that and the epilogue.

To relieve some of my frustrations, I put typing fingers to paper on Identity, breaking the rule I'd tried to adhere to not to start the story until I outlined it fully, but it was a refreshing exercise (even if I throw away everything I've written, which is only about 2500 words). I'm still ambivalent about whether to use first-person or third-person in this story, whether I should do something closer to Nicholas Torrence or to Echoes. Echoes is very choppy on balance: I could easily jump between half a dozen perspectives in the course of a chapter, or three or four in an act alone. The times I haven't done this (really just "The Brothers Hikari" and the first three acts of chapter twenty) have been, in my opinion, more artistic than the others (although "Imitations of Roll" and "Selfishness" are among the best chapters).

Writing Identity in first-person rather than third vastly changes the dynamics of the piece. Instead of an ensemble plot, I have to put most of those extra plot lines into subtle scenes that don't spell out the whole story (because the narrator, which I strongly believe will be Akane) couldn't know them. Third-person would allow me to make explicit more of these plots and allow the reader to anticipate the disasters that come when plots collide. Hence, a drawback in terms of plot, but the first-person always lends itself to a certain fluidity, one that only a single-perspective third-person could match, but only at the cost of intimacy. First-person really draws you in...or spits you out, as the case may be. When I outline the story, though, I think I'll have a better idea of how I want to do it.

Which brings me to another question, one I've always struggled with: is it better to work on one story, and stay stubbornly focused on that story even when it frustrates you, or is it better to have many concurrent projects, and as one puts up a block, move on to the next?

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