Scenes, Fluidity, Goals, and Point of View

Something I've often looked at is the nature of a scene and how different lengths of scenes and passages affect the fluidity and reading of a work. I'll admit I draw a lot of influence from Randy Ingermanson's method of scene structure. To save people from having to parse that whole page, I'll summarize his basic ideas:

Ingermanson says that scenes have a large- and small-scale structure. On a large scale, a scene requires that a character in the scene have a goal, that they face conflict in trying to reach that goal, and that ultimately, some sort of disaster occur to ultimately make that goal moot---whether it becomes impossible and requires a new goal be achieved first, whether it be accomplished and allow for the next goal to ensue. Whatever the reason, the disaster kicks off a "sequel" to the scene, in which the character experiences an emotional reaction, faces a dilemma about what courses of action to take, and finally decides on the next goal.

I tried this structure for a time in a strict sort of way, plotting out every scene and sequel scene with the three fundamental components. Ultimately, I found it very slow doing. One of the conceptual problems I had was that I couldn't really figure out what scale these concepts work on. It's easy to see how this works for, say, a platoon of soldiers trying to take an enemy position. It's harder to think how that may apply as cleanly or easily to a romance or another type of story.

That said, I definitely ascribe to the idea that characters have goals and that the turning points in stories occur when those goals change: they're accomplished, failed, or rendered moot. Those are the fates of goals, and it's not bad writing to suggest that most goals fail because then, the character must replace it with another one or given in to defeat. Goals need not be material; they can be subjective. Escaping pain can be a goal---it's just not one that a character is likely to be conscious of sometimes.

It's also important to realize that the driving goal of a scene may not be the POV character's goals. The opening scene of "Before and After" occurs with Gendo questioning Rei about her behavior. It's Gendo who wants to understand something. It's Gendo who faces conflict in Rei's inability or even refusal to understand. But viewed oppositely, maybe you can say it's Rei who's trying to say the right thing, to say what Gendo wants her to say, and that the rest of the chapter is her further effort to comprehend what Gendo meant by questioning her---and whether he's right.

I speak of "Before and After" in particular because it represents a bit of a contrast for me compared to third-person pieces like Identity or Echoes. One of the things I decided to do early on in "Before and After" was to avoid scene breaks at all, instead using narration to smooth the gaps. It's not that I don't think scene breaks are bad for first-person; I just considered it as much of a challenge as something I thought Rei would do. It's long been something I wanted to work on: the fluidity between scenes. I've often thought that frequent scenes under a thousand words or so to be too choppy on a regular basis. I don't strictly monitor scene length anymore. Act 4.7 of Identity is a good example: there are scenes that change POV without breaks (which Ingermanson considered a big no-no), there are short scenes, there's a long battle scene and a short one. With 4.7 I really tried to introduce actions in a sequence that made sense, using the idea that X happens and this is how Ranma and company react. Hence, I jumped POV's a lot mid-scene because a break would separate the action from the reaction.

Point of view is another big topic. A while back I read "Simplicity," by Tender Falling Rain--on the review I left I complained about big paragraphs, not because big paragraphs are bad, but I felt it might help to start small and ease people into the story, but that's another topic for another day--and the author there did exactly what I was talking about earlier: they changed point of view rather abruptly, I thought. It's something I read a lot in fanfiction, often to accomplish one thing: to show two people's internal reactions to the same scene. As always, I won't say that this shouldn't be done (again, I've done it myself), but I often ask myself when I see this technique done: was it necessary? Are these reactions that absolutely can't be portrayed with a single camera, so to speak? Do we need to jump from set of eyes to set of eyes to really comprehend the scene? Don't get me wrong; I think the versatility of an omniscient POV is a great thing, but I also think the personal nature of a limited POV (and here I use the terms loosely--I think narrative mode can temporarily be either and overall be neither) is really powerful. When you're unwilling for whatever reason to do a first-person narrative, sticking with the thoughts and feelings of a single character through the completion of a scene can really hit home what they see and how they see things...or how they misunderstand things, how what they see isn't reality.

That's a big point where I must disagree with Ingermanson. He speaks later on about the small-scale structure of scenes, about "motivation-reaction units" or MRUs. To summarize, motivation is what characters outside the POV character do and say, and reaction is what the POV character feels, thinks, says, and does to react to them. Ingermanson says that the motivation is "necessarily objective," and this is a big thing where I've felt I must diverge. I like the idea that what people see and hear is subjective and colored by emotions. I deal a lot in the notions of hallucinations and visions. What we experience is subjective. When I describe a sunny day as bright and warm, it carries a different connotation from hot and blinding. But then, maybe blinding is a bad word, and I should simply say it's bright before I say that Paul shaded his eyes, squinting, and reached for a pair of shades. As always, we balance show versus tell in writing.

Perhaps I've rambled enough. What did I mean to say? That a scene is done when it's done? That you can use as many or as few breaks as you like and it's fine? That goals can be as lofty as world peace and as petty as buying a bag of coffee grounds? That POV can be as nose-in-the-dirt or watching from orbit as needed? Yeah, something like that. Writing's all about appropriate place and time. There are few hard and fast rules, just a lot of choices. What conveys the meaning stylistically? Do you want to call attention to a scene with a break or keep the flow going? Do you want people to feel immediately a character's heartache or joy, or do you need to cover a hundred years of backstory in a few short paragraphs? It's all about finding the right tool for the job, I guess, and it's best, as a rule, to not rule out any of them.

Most of the time, anyway.

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Identity 4.7 - "To Slay the Monters within Our Souls"

The final act of chapter four on Fanfiction.net

I've actually been working on chapter three of "Before and After" for the last week or so, and as a result I'm even further behind on Identity, but I felt it was time to look at something different. I think it's good to change gears that way every once in a while. If I've learned anything from coming back to that story, it's to remember always to keep in mind a character's emotional journey.

Anyway, commentary below.

What's the point of a chapter where, in the end, almost everything is the same as when you started? What's the point when, in the final analysis, Ranma's still a prisoner of the Sorcerers and Jusenkyo is even more impenetrable than it was before? None of the main characters have died or anything drastic like that. It all seems like a total Shaggy Dog Story. It all seems like it was for nothing.

I could defend my choice in this matter with a pure statement of facts. The facts are that some things have changed from beginning to end here: Cologne now knows the Sorcerers' objective is Saffron, and she'll be quick to share that with the others. Ranma has grown immensely in magical capability and power, and that is something that can't be erased. Akane has had a tough dealing with the Sorcerers in a way that could, given the chance, strongly motivate her for the events to come.

Ultimately, however, the only defense I have is what comes after this chapter, not anything that resides fully within it.

I know it must be particularly funny when you take the result of this chapter and go back to what I said before: that one must be willing to do things that are inconvenient for the plot because it would be too contrived, too convenient, to do otherwise. Is it convenient that Kohl chooses to release Akane? Is it convenient that the Sorcerers can send a hundred-man force to Jusenkyo so quickly as to overwhelm the Amazons there? Ultimately, only the reader can decide. All I can do is show that I planned things to happen this way; I didn't pull this Sorcerer army out of a hat. We knew it was coming since act three or four, after all. That's the benefit of planning. It dulls the impact of something that might otherwise have to be inserted without a moment's notice. And I can say definitively that I didn't do this without a lot of consideration, but I stick by the story before me. I think what's to come will make it fit.

In a lot of ways, this was a complicated chapter to write. I didn't expect it to be this long, but on balance, I shouldn't be surprised. When you have a chapter that has a lot happen, it will take a long time to tell in a pacing that makes sense. We have multiple events transpiring across two different places or more. There are perspective jumps without scene breaks because, ultimately, what I felt needed to be followed was the progression of causality, of decision-making. Ranma gets moving up to the peak to look for Akane largely because he can see Cologne's attack going on above and knows he's running out of time. We shift to Kohl's perspective after Akane falls because the scene is still unfolding, and someone needs to be at the center of the point of view. Despite its length, the chapter maintains a brisk pace, in my mind. There isn't a point of break or a respite. Everything just keeps going.

It's a bitter thing to have your heroes fail, and to justify it, I feel it may take more of a threat than the minimum really needed to expect a retreat, a setback. To this point in the story, no one on the Amazon side had seen a Sorcerer turn a person to ash. They fought against tough odds and persevered, yet I thought if anything could make the Amazons shake in their boots, the spell that decimated their forces 20 years ago would do it, and for Kohl to realize just how potent and dangerous that magic is seemed appropriate for the moment. There's a good reason Kohl's surprised to unleash that power. Again, my only defense is in the context provided after the battle.

I felt it was very important for Akane not to be a simple bystander, a damsel in distress, for this battle. Even crippled as she was, she makes an honest attempt at escape, at distraction, and to an extent, it works--maybe not the way she thought, but it does work. She's not going to bowl over a Sorcerer army, but one-on-one she can inconvenience even Kohl, and once again, there's the dissonance in Kohl between begrudging respect and duty to his tribe. And that hesitation costs him. You might even say it's part of why he doesn't want Akane there any longer, but I also think his entreaty for her understanding is genuine. Akane herself may not stop trying to find Ranma, but it's expedient if the Amazons get out of Kohl's way, and I think he too is frightened by the magic he unleashed. Who can say.

And what of Ranma? What does he get for his trouble? It may not seem like much, but consider the powers he's managed to tap into, not from training or time but simple emotional desperation and need. In some ways, I must admit it's a little tough writing for something like Ranma, where the rules of combat or magic are often malleable to serve comedic timing. It often means you have to balance one instance or depiction against another in the same canon, but in the end, all you can do is pick the way you want to portray things and try to be consistent (if that's important to you--it should be clear that one need not strictly do so and still have a successful work, for after all, that's the very problem being faced).

So what are the monsters and demons of this chapter, then? For my part, as I've said in the commentaries for many of the preceding installments, it's that feeling of weakness and helplessness that we all face at one point or another. Even when Ranma was weakened, he stared blindly into the abyss and found that last bit of strength to tap into. Even when he thought he could do nothing to find Akane, he made one last effort to buy time and let the others get to safety. Akane herself, too, crippled and wounded, provides a critical distraction at a time most needed. That's the kind of story I'm trying to write here--one where people face up to their shortcomings, their fears, and come out the better for it. One must swim, dive, and sink into the abyss to do it, but eventually, they come up in the light.

But, of course, part of the fun is seeing just how black the water can get. That's my opinion on the meaning of monsters and demons, anyway, but as always, when something isn't spelled out in text for you to read, you should feel free to find the meaning that appeals to you.

What monsters do you see when you look into the mirror? What monsters lie within your soul? What demons would you banish from the quiet corners of your mind, so that you may sing and ponder and dream?

The answers to these questions are different for all of us, and in writing, I hope to explore these characters and discover a unique solution for each of them.

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Inception

I've actually seen several movies since I last reviewed one, like Knight and Day and The A-Team, but those were just fun (some reviewers might say they weren't very good at all or just very standard).

Inception was fun, too, but I can definitely say it wasn't standard.

Without a doubt, Inception is effective storytelling. It's economical with time and plot, making the best use of screen time to not only move the story forward but help bring the audience deeper into the tale. What's the purpose of the opening few scenes? To establish how Cobb is haunted by the projection of Mal? To show nested dreams and the workings of an architect and the dream machines? To establish Saito as not merely a mark but someone who wants something in and of itself?

Arguably, the answer is all these things and more. Cobb's efforts on the bullet train is both a critical introduction to dreams and idea theft in this world, they also give Cobb new motivation--Saito's deal--and make the way for a new character to enter the story: the replacement architect Kitty Pride--er, Juno--er, Ariadne.

Make no mistake, as soon as Araiadne enters the picture, you know you're going to be given more exposition: she's a classic newcomer character who's a stand-in for the audience. She's the Everyman, and as such, she probes the questions we want answered. In this way, Ariadne is underdeveloped, and that's one criticism I have int his move. Not to say I can see how she could've been more developed, but you can notice it pretty easily. When she suggests they keep going even after Fischer's been sent to Limbo, there's a glaring question: why? What is her motivation, her reason? The answer seems to be nothing more than "why not" or "what have we got to lose," and this is...unsatisfying.

But she serves a vital purpose, all the same, asking questions of Cobb that the others won't. There's a reason the Everyman is a trope, after all.

Truly, though, the driving force of this movie is Dom Cobb and Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. His motivations are simple and easy for anyone else to relate. The guilt that haunts him is no less than terrifying. To think that, in trying to help someone we love come back to reality, we can be inadvertently responsible for driving them even further to madness...who wouldn't feel guilty? The revelation that Cobb performed an inception on Mal, that this was why he was so certain it could be done to Fischer---it puts the movie into complete focus. It's a stunning moment. And it works.

I once read that a critical thing to do in a world that doesn't work like ours is to establish, at least to yourself, the writer, what the characters can and can't do and then make sure the audience understands that, too. Doing this is important: by preestablishing the boundaries, you make failures into consequences, not chance happenings, and plot is all about action and consequence. Look at the rules of the dream: what happens when you manipulate the dream (you piss off constructs and draw more and more attention), what happens when you die (you wake up). The only weakness I'd say exists is in the idea of limbo being so quickly introduced; knowing they had a 3-level dream in place, Limbo should've been mentioned way before they were in the first level dream of Fischer's facing his weaponized constructs. So you can see what's done well and what's not (even if Cobb's prior experience in Limbo sorta makes up for it).

Inception is a strong movie, united in theme and personal motivation. There are weaknesses, but they're not dominant. You could say this movie is almost a class in how to tell a story, particularly with an ending that's just screwy enough to make you guess. We don't know the final fates of the characters. We don't need to, not for all of them. This movie is about Cobb, and once he's back with his children, nothing else really matters. Yes, even whether the top will stay spinning or fall.

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Identity 4.6 - "To Fight the Demons that Haunt Us"

"To Fight..." blah blah on FFN

As usual, commentary below.

No, the title isn't long enough. Heh. Actually, it's really the best I could come up with from when I realized that this act direly needed to exist on its own. This is what I get for planning two (three?) wham moments in a single act. It just makes everything a mess.

But it was really important to me, on the whole, that Ranma's final dealing with Henna stand on its own. It stands oddly, in the middle of this act rather than at the end, but his reaction to it is important, too. What is it that drives Ranma here? What is it that allows him to conjure magics he's never even tried to use before?

It's that Akane in his mind, the one who's staring at him with no love or warmth about her, just coldness. It's notably not how she was behaving at the time, but in the end, I have to imagine it--if Akane being angry doesn't disturb Ranma, her lack of anger would. It does, often enough. When Akane gives Ranma up to Nabiki, Ranma prods her through and through, but it's only when her anger gives way to something else that he stops. Whether you read hurt into her expression and concern into his, well, I leave that to the reader. At any rate, I submit that Akane being angry doesn't bother Ranma. It's something he's used to dealing with, at least. We can theorize that it's because Akane's default reaction to something unpleasant is anger, and it's only when it really bothers her that she shows something more genuine, but again, that's not the point I'm trying to prove, only to demonstrate why I think her anger wouldn't bother Ranma, at least not as much as a more subtle response. The bottom line, though, is that we can already see, as before, how an emotional response is the basis for powerful magic in this world.

Going along those lines, you might notice that Henna says the magic should be weaker (with Ranma in that girl body). I admit, I didn't have Ranma's magic be so weak as to be noticeable when female. Does this, conversely, require it to be that much stronger when male? Perhaps. Again, the basis for this distinction rises from the Musk Dynasty storyline, but for convenience, it may be that I have to blame some of it on the particular nature of the Sorcerers' curse as well (which is something Ranma would be exempt from). It's admittedly a little sloppy on my part.

It's in this act that I feel the character Henna really comes into her own. I do admit that the level of detail she shares with Ranma is, on one level, gratuitous. Sure, it can be justified. We can say, for example, that she wants Ranma to understand her, even to agree with what she's doing and vindicate her actions. Any way you put it, though, she's just nuts. She's mad. She's mad in a way that becomes all the more pertinent when we're confronted to how similar she is to Ranma, at least outwardly.

I do want to talk about the idea of Ranma counting. It's a thing I shamelessly borrowed from myself, from Nicholas Torrence. Make no mistake, Ranma doesn't regret killing Henna, but each death on his hands takes a toll on his emotional stability, the same emotions that are giving him power. And I think it's a profound moment when he accepts responsibility for the male Amazon's death. It shows just how much he needs his abilities, his strength. Even when without them, he still holds himself to a standard as if he had them. It's not about honor, but just what his pride (Ranma's very specific, particular definition of pride, forged with a dose of pragmatism) demands. On the broader subject, though, it's stuff like Ranma counting or Shampoo being preoccupied with her choker that I really enjoy writing. In these moments, you see something strange and peculiar about their thinking.

One thing I've learned over the course of writing this story is that you have to be willing to write the things you're afraid to write. I said before Ranma wasn't meant to even be at Jusenkyo for this chapter, but including him has made it all the better. Originally, I didn't even mean for him to meet with Cologne, and the barrier of Marula's language skills (at once rather hilarious and cruel as a measure of fate goes, that she doesn't understand him but all the important Sorcerers do) would prevent critical knowledge of the Sorcerers' plans from getting out. (You're probably guessing that means Ranma won't be escaping the Sorcerers by the end of the chapter. You'd be right. Ironically, that point actually undermines the point of the paragraph.) In the end, however, I let Ranma get to Cologne; I wrote him into this chapter, and as a result, the chapter is better for it. I find, usually when you say that a minor thing breaks the story so much that you can't do it, that's your sense of logic telling you you should, for exactly that reason. If Marula's lack of Japanese skills had really prevented information from getting through, it would've been little more than a cop out--after all, I chose whether she knows Japanese, and for that little detail to make such a difference without foreshadowing, without a preestablished reason made explicit, it would be bad writing. Here, it just adds a little relief and humor. And that's fine.

When I thought this would be part of the act to come after it, I included the scene at the beginning with Kohl and Akane sort of as a reminder that they were there. Of the storylines in this chapter, I have to say Akane's was and is the least developed. She was never in a lot of position to do anything about her captivity, and the point of her being there is largely, to be blunt, to make an impression on Kohl. Here we see her tenacity, and it's tenacity she'll show again and again. As a joke, I like to think I make characters seem awesome not by winning but by losing in the most drawn out fashion, by taking a ton of punishment. Like with her confrontation with Kohl in act 3, Akane's battle here is short and she really has to limp away from it, but you can't fault her for trying.

Anyway, now the stage is all set, and the last battle for Jusenkyo can finally run its course. Hope to see everybody next week.

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Identity: statistical trends from June

Last month, I did a bit of a look at the hit statistics for Identity, and that's something I want to continue each month hereafter. The statistics for this month are extremely interesting, and while I won't type out the chapter-by-chapter statistics (because, last time, I had to do that by hand...), I will comment on a few general trends.

First, the total number of hits was 3878, about a 15% drop from May. While all the chapters in May had 3-digit hit totals, in June, almost everything after "Sounds of Night" is < 100 hits until "The Last Right," which had been posted at the end of May and was still on its first run. In particular, between "Sounds of Night" and "Doubt," nearly 42% of hits were lost. This, to me, indicates that "Sounds of Night" was particularly weak with readers, something that was similarly indicated in May. A notable exception, however, is that "The Cold Rain" has more hits than "Doubt," which I attribute to reread value.

What's more interesting, though, is the overall change in hit/visitor patterns over the course of this month. In May, I had one particularly good release day, May 14, where Identity received 795 hits from 224 visitors. This was the best release day in terms of hits since I went to the new weekly release format. The other Fridays were in the neighborhood of 300-500 hits and 150-200 visitors. This carried over for the first couple Fridays in June, but midway through the month, I changed the story summary to include a short general summary and a more specific chapter summary for the FFN Ranma page. It was about this time (I imply no direct causation, merely correlation) that the hit/visitor distribution began to change. June 4th saw 532 hits from 197 visitors, but June 18 saw 467 hits from 248 visitors; that's a drastic change in hit/visitor ratio. Since changing the story summary, the hit/visitor ratio on release spikes has dropped below 2:1, where before it was above 2.5:1. In addition, the dropoff from a Friday hit spike over the rest of the week has steepened greatly (it's much more pronounced).

I suspect a couple effects are in play here. First, there's reader saturation: as Identity spends more and more time on the FFN front page, the number of readers who've not already read it or not already decided to forgo it trends toward zero. As that happens, most hits are generated through repeat readers. However, there's still a casual reader component in play--people who don't check FFN frequently may stumble upon the story still. Even so, knowing that this dropoff in hit/visitor ratio occurred in tandem with the summary change, I suspect that the summary is now enticing more repeat readers to read on the first day (which...I did want) while turning off new readers from reading through the story (which...I didn't want). Since new readers, I think, are more important and repeat readers will come to revisit the story on their own time, I'm debating whether to go back to a more general summary. I've never been quite happy with the summaries I've had for the story, as the scope of things really is difficult to capture.

But then, I'm still a little disappointed with the overall reception to Identity. It's clear that the running readership of the story is small compared to other popular stories on the site, and I think this largely stems from something fundamentally amiss with the story and how it appeals to FFN demographics. I mentioned in the commentary for "Water" that I wanted to include more humor. Overall, I think it's a good thing to wonder how to improve popularity of a story, within limits of what you want to do artistically, and wanting to make the story more widely read has made me think more critically about what I can do to better my writing style. So that's positive. But even so, I wonder--I look at the reception to "Before and After" thus far and think that maybe, with the act/chapter restructuring, I've already lost the best time to pick up readers. It seems as if once a story is so long, the willingness for people to jump into it decreases (I know this well; I do it myself), and while number of reviews may prompt some to reconsider, that number certainly must pass some critical threshold before contributing significantly to new readership.

Which would mean, until then, things will be slow. Slow is a relative thing, I know. 2-4 reviews per chapter (on the new ones, anyway) certainly isn't bad. It's better than nothing. But at the same time, I know it could be more, it could be better. The question, then, is how to get there.

But, that's probably enough whining, so to speak. All I can do is keep learning and writing.

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Identity 4.5 - "The Red Sign"

"The Red Sign" on FFN

I've been a little quiet over the past week and struggled to get things moving on act two of chapter five, but I should have a post about June stats for Identity in the next couple of days.

Commentary below.

This was an act that I knew, after I'd written it, I'd want to go back and fix things. I actually commented into the LaTeX source about five different things I was concerned about. As it turned out upon rereading, some of those things weren't worth trying to modify when they were pretty good on their own, but one thing about this act I really felt needed polishing, and that was the whole confrontation between Shampoo and Ukyo.

This was actually one of those moments I've talked about, one of the few scenes that you know you want to write even before all or even most of the plot's been laid out. It's...formative to the narrative as a whole. It drives the directions you want character conflicts to go. But all too often, there's a temptation to hold those early conceptions of a scene sacrosanct, when in reality, it's no different from any other scene, and you have to be willing to change it, modify it, make it fit with the rest of the piece, rather than treating it as something all-important.

Early on, then, I knew I wanted Shampoo and Ukyo to come to a major confrontation, but I'd thought, at the time, that it would be Shampoo's sinister nature of conspiring against Akane that would prompt Ukyo to retaliate--nay, even to try blackmailing Shampoo in some way to get her to do the right thing. As you can see, the final scene didn't turn out that way at all and is much better integrated into the theme of weakness for this chapter. Shampoo's willingness to abandon Ranma and leave him to Akane is an expression of despair. Shampoo can't bring herself to actually give up on pursuing Ranma, so hiding behind this veil of logic, of what's best to be done, is what she uses to justify her action, but she too is aware of what's going on, and exactly as she says, it's too painful to her to think of sending people to die when it's for the person she hates most in this world, the person who stands between her and Ranma's love.

In the first real draft of this act, Ukyo was the one who was much more paranoid about it, accusing Shampoo of hanging Akane out to dry first. All along, I felt something was wrong with that. It made Ukyo out to be self-righteous and...again, paranoid. The leap she made just didn't make sense, but hearing it come from Shampoo's lips first, the overall confrontation became much more logical in progression. Even so, there's always this juxtaposition between what's right for people to do and what they want to do. Make no mistake: Shampoo was initially right here. They don't have the resources to mount another attack. They have no way in, and they have no way to ensure or even hope for victory. To go back into the Maze like that would be absurd, and while Ukyo isn't wrong to want to keep considering the issue, in the end, the logical conclusions don't change. What Ryoga does changes the facts, and in doing so, Shampoo regains her courage, her sliver of hope for glory, to save Ranma.

You might notice I haven't talked about the beginning sequence of the act at all. As you can tell, its significance is really only twofold: to give Shampoo a bitter defeat and to show Ryoga's importance to this story. Both are critical, but I want to make a greater point: the action serves a purpose, and the consequences are vital to shaping what happens after. Without a doubt it was a difficult sequence to write, what with a lot going on in a lot of different perspectives, but it needed to happen. The Amazons needed to be utterly defeated here, spared only by the casualties the Sorcerers inflict upon themselves.

I really enjoyed writing the Ryoga passage here, though. Sure, I exaggerated his propensity to get lost, but it was fun. A Stephen Hawking cameo was fun, and the shout out to TNG? That was fun, too. It's the kind of levity I find natural, and it had the bonus of being relevant to the plot to follow, too. Ever since chapter two (chapter one, even, when Ranma notices Wuya can understand him), there's been a question of how these Sorcerers know Japanese. Not a very relevant question to some, considering other tribes have known more for less justification, but I've intended for a while that Ryoga's father be the one who did it, and maybe in book two he'll come back to help with these Sorcerers. We'll see. Truthfully, I haven't made up my mind on that one, so we really will see.

One thing I do regret is that the natural evolution of this act really put less emphasis on Konatsu and Mousse than I wanted. They're in the act, but in terms of providing emotional support to Ukyo and Shampoo, it just isn't there. They're too fixated on Ranma. Neither one of them have really come to doubt that they should look elsewhere, and while I really don't intend for Shampoo to go that route, Ukyo, I'd thought, really needed some counterbalance. Maybe it's because I'm finding the Ukyo/Shampoo dynamic more interesting in terms of opposite mindsets, but that's not meant to be anything other than opposition, to so speak.

One last thing: yes, the "red sign" is Shampoo's choker. To me, it seems like a really appealing symbol, to her anyway, of her responsibility as a member of the tribe, her duty and desire to marry Ranma and to lead her people to victory, and as either of those purposes comes into doubt, the need to remind herself of her mission, to compensate for her failures, will rise. At least, that's the way I think people work.

But anyway, now the stage is finally set for the last two acts, for a battle over the mountain that, at least in my mind, will be pretty crazy. But you might understand by now that for me, crazy is fun, so we'll see how that goes.

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Identity 4.4 - "Water"

"Water" on FFN

When I was drawing up the outline to "Monsters and Demons," I originally thought it would work something like this: Ranma for an act, Shampoo and Ukyo, then Akane; Ranma again, Shampoo and Ukyo, then the finale. That's actually probably not the original order I had in mind (I think I wanted Ranma to be second in the order of three initially), but it's what I soon settled on--it was a lot easier to put Ranma first and leave what happened to Jusenkyo in mystery--and that's the basic structure (aside from splitting the last act into two parts) that persists to now.

When you do a story with several plot lines (see tvtropes; what I'm doing I think is considered either "Two Lines, No Waiting" or "Third Line, Some Waiting"--considering that the Akane/Kohl subplot gets a bit less time than the others, I'm tempted to call it the latter), you have to consider that it essentially means the plots by themselves might not work if told separately. The interweaving effect allows you to, in some ways, shorten both plotlines and remove what might be considered dull and boring. In this case, we've not seen Ranma since act one. The implied passage of time is enough to make us interested in what's happening to him. If I had to show that directly, it would slow down the pace of his plotline considerably. At least, that's my theory. It means, I hope, that I can just jump into his story again and not spend too much time detailing everything that's happened to him.

One of the big things I had to pin down was the role of Henna in this chapter. She's a priestess for the Sorcerers. What does she want? To help the animals? That's boring. Ranma doesn't buy it, and neither should you. And (I'm not sure how obvious it is), you might get an understanding of what Henna wants, even before I've really revealed it explicitly. It's not just to conduct an experiment. This is deeply personal to Henna, and it's that personal connection that I really came up with and emphasized here, not in act one. In fact, trying to retroactively work that into one didn't work--it felt too clumsy. Don't worry if you don't see it yet. Come act six, it'll all be very neatly spelled out.

It was around the time of this act that I started thinking more about humor. I read once that people will read your stories if you get them first with humor and then go into the deep stuff that you want to go into. Humor is just more accessible to people as an initial emotional reaction. To this point, Identity hasn't been a humorous story. That's not really going to change. But I am thinking carefully about ways to maintain moments of humor to lighten the mood where appropriate, to provide contrast against the darkness that can overtake later on. The good thing about having more humor is that, when you do go into the black, you can really kick people in the balls, so to speak.

Perhaps that was a bit of an inappropriate image.

But, I do like writing humor at times, even if pure comedy isn't something I find very interesting to write. It was for that reason that I felt I could get away with breaking the fourth wall a tad, where Ranma begins to "hear" the narrator in his head. That and a moment in act five are really fun moments, and I tried to keep them from going too far while also having them stand out. It's a tricky balance. I've always liked writing Ranma as a naturally snarky fellow; when he gets irritated, he snarks, and it's really a lot of fun to write because few things really bother him, but he can get just a bit ticked off at a lot of things. It's his way of resisting defeat in some sense. Even in Sorcerer captivity, he can't help but verbally jab at them. That's why I like Ranma. He can be a prankster, but as often as not, he shows irritation through wit. To us, his remarks are funny. To him, he's just speaking the brutal truth as he sees it, trying to cut through the b.s. that annoys him.

All along, I've tried to portray Ranma as a truly resourceful, cunning character, one who is most of the time a good person but who carries with him a bit of a ruthless edge, a survivalist mentality. He's not going to hesitate to kill rabbits. He mostly leaves people alone unless they bother him. He doesn't have a problem not fighting fair. The experience I talk about him having with starvation and dehydration I see as natural extensions of Genma's ways, which depending on their luck, I imagine, could dip into those very desperate levels very easily. In some respects, this is different. Ranma's magically weakened in ways he doesn't understand. That makes it worse.

Once again, we come back to weakness and inadequacy. I truly see this as driving a lot of the characters. Ranma fears himself an inadequate man or husband. Akane hesitates to confess to him, thinking herself an inadequate wife. With Shampoo, she wonders if she's done an adequate job and fulfilling her duty to the tribe, in seducing Ranma to take him or in training to be a warrior to fight alongside him. Ukyo wonders if she's a good enough daughter along with her efforts to win Ranma. I must stress these are my interpretations of the characters, that the behaviors they display in canon are merely consistent with one conception of those interpretations but do not prove them true. Is Akane really that blindly confident in her skills, or is she overcompensating for a perceived flaw? All I'm suggesting is the latter, though I don't rule out the former.

Do you remember in "Black and Red" that Akane seems to vaguely remember Kohl's communion with Sindoor? That's basically meant to make the last scene in this act more plausible. Without it, Ranma doesn't know the Sorcerers' reinforcements are coming, and that's important. Critically important.

Of course, there are some things I still wonder about, thinking whether I should've done them differently. Ranma's encounter with the Amazons in the tunnel is at once logical and yet colored by his weakness, harkening back a comment I made in reply to R. T. Stephens on his review for last act: people can do logical things for illogical reasons, using logic to justify an act that they'd already decided to do. In my mind, that's the way people work. Logic is often secondary to emotion, and Ranma, feeling weak, can't help but be a little afraid. It overrides his usual bravery, for he knows he doesn't have the strength to back it up.

A lot of the logical issues in this chapter go back to the fact that I didn't even want Ranma at Jusenkyo initially. Knowing that, you can see the issues I faced. I didn't want Ranma to actually meet with the Amazons and escape; hence, he's afraid to go face them after he's been shot. These are, I think, the subtle things authors do to justify what they want to happen, and you, the reader, must be the judge: do the reasons we give for actions and events make sense? Are they logical enough to excuse the times we steer the story in the directions we want? Look at the passage when Ranma's shot and decide for yourself. I stand ready to accept any judgment.

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Editing Methods

With the Fourth of July coming up, my family and I headed south to Florida to visit some relatives in West Palm Beach, and knowing that that would mean a good ten hours or more in the car with not much else to do but sleep, eat, drive, or read, I thought it'd be a good idea to print out act 4.4 of Identity, "Water," and look over a hard copy for errors. This isn't something I've done before, but I'd heard it could be useful. People look differently at words on a page, after all, even compared to words on a screen, and a good bit of the editing process is about taking the words out of a familiar zone and putting them into some other place, where you can't just skim over them and know what they say but actually have to read.

In the past, I used to read my chapters aloud from time to time. This can be very useful for dealing with the small-scale structure of a work. You have to pay more attention to sentence structure and syllabic rhythm--the kinds of things that will make readers get bogged down in the writing if you do them wrong, just because the words don't flow. It's important, but this method can be time consuming, and with a lot of the Japanese names in Identity, I admit I rather lost patience for this method, if only because I felt I was spending more time trying to pronounce names correctly and yet reconcile that with normal English cadence and vowels. It was, in short, a bit jarring any way I did it.

It's at this point I must admit I've never had a beta reader. I've always paid a lot of technical attention to the things that tend to get overlooked by some would-be writers: punctuation and spelling. That's not to say I started out a good writer; I'm quite sure I wasn't when I was 13 or so, which is when I began. I've actually written quite a bit since then and still have a lot of ideas to expand upon, and with each story, writing improves. I think that's natural. I think we all improve as we learn by repetition. Eventually, you get a feel for things you found difficult and can focus on even more difficult and challenging tasks. And that's good.

But I've never had a beta, in part because I feel there must be many different types of betas for many skill levels of writers. There are betas who may only be technical proofreaders, but there are likely others who are adept at critical reading, finding holes, and giving feedback on them. Writers don't often have the keenest sense of what's clear to a reader. I feel I don't need much technical work--just another set of eyes to catch the odd mistake--but perhaps the input of a beta as to pacing, plot, characterization...those could be useful. Truth be told, though, I really don't know how that whole process works.

I did take my hard copy of "Water" with me and looked over it, and I felt that was a constructive process. It gives me the opportunity to identify things I dislike or want to change without the pressure of actually fixing them on the spot, which is good. That's something that can be done with LaTeX comments, too. I did use LaTeX to format the chapter in a monospace font double-line-spaced manuscript. That's something some publishers want a writer to do, anyway, and it gives some flexibility for me: I can keep one template to look like a book and another to format the novel like a typewritten manuscript and not have to change the content from one to the other. But anyway, I like having this printed-out copy of the chapter, and I may do that again in the future. We'll see.

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