Wednesday
Apr072010
Novels and Hopes
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 08:51PM
Okay, so I've been thinking more about getting my hopes up--thanks for the support Miss Ming!--and about writing, and how the two play into each other.
I'm in the middle (and trying, trying to draw it out) of CONSPIRACY OF KINGS by Megan Whalen Turner. Now, MWT is an absolute master of twisty plots--Eugenides, one of her main characters, is a master of sleight of hand, and the whole novel becomes something like an elaborate hoax on the reader. Which I LOVE, of course.
So I'm in the middle of a particularly rough part where I feel like the main character is about to get royally screwed over (literally, actually), and there's this whine that is coming into my head like a devil on my shoulder: "come on, read faster, you KNOW it all works out in the end."
And THERE's the rub. I mean, on the one hand, I'm a writer and a total optimist for my characters. I'm going to put them through utter hell and torture (and that's literally in the case of Scarlet--not the hell, but definitely the torture) but dammit, they are going to get their well deserved happily ever after.
In the young adult world, if you put up with total crap with pluck and a smile, you'll earn yourself a happy ending. If you cave, you're probably going to end up in an unhappy marriage or as a scullery maid or something.
Not that some scullery maids don't go on to be happily ended heroines. Because they do. Check out THE LITTLE PRINCESS for reference.
But then again, the happy ending and triumph of that happy ending only works out because both the reader and the character believe it's never going to happen.
So should I go with authorial instincts and convince myself that it's going to work out in the end, no matter what obstacles I face?
Or should I go with reader and character instincts and get so deeply engrossed in the moment that I can't even fathom how it's going to work out--leaving me shocked or shattered depending on how it all unfolds?
Well, I'll be honest, I'm more of a throes-of-the-moment kind of girl, mostly because it comes with highly saturated emotion, drama, and the occasional bout of total mope-age. I love a good mope.
So....that resolves nothing.
xx
I'm in the middle (and trying, trying to draw it out) of CONSPIRACY OF KINGS by Megan Whalen Turner. Now, MWT is an absolute master of twisty plots--Eugenides, one of her main characters, is a master of sleight of hand, and the whole novel becomes something like an elaborate hoax on the reader. Which I LOVE, of course.
So I'm in the middle of a particularly rough part where I feel like the main character is about to get royally screwed over (literally, actually), and there's this whine that is coming into my head like a devil on my shoulder: "come on, read faster, you KNOW it all works out in the end."
And THERE's the rub. I mean, on the one hand, I'm a writer and a total optimist for my characters. I'm going to put them through utter hell and torture (and that's literally in the case of Scarlet--not the hell, but definitely the torture) but dammit, they are going to get their well deserved happily ever after.
In the young adult world, if you put up with total crap with pluck and a smile, you'll earn yourself a happy ending. If you cave, you're probably going to end up in an unhappy marriage or as a scullery maid or something.
Not that some scullery maids don't go on to be happily ended heroines. Because they do. Check out THE LITTLE PRINCESS for reference.
But then again, the happy ending and triumph of that happy ending only works out because both the reader and the character believe it's never going to happen.
So should I go with authorial instincts and convince myself that it's going to work out in the end, no matter what obstacles I face?
Or should I go with reader and character instincts and get so deeply engrossed in the moment that I can't even fathom how it's going to work out--leaving me shocked or shattered depending on how it all unfolds?
Well, I'll be honest, I'm more of a throes-of-the-moment kind of girl, mostly because it comes with highly saturated emotion, drama, and the occasional bout of total mope-age. I love a good mope.
So....that resolves nothing.
xx
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