In search of lost timelines

Finally, Chapter 1 is in draft. The first 4,000 words of the novel (counting the prologue), plus another 900 words into the next chapter.

That's seven percent of the book, right there. But I did just over-run my outline so I have very little planned for what exactly goes next.

I mean, I have the plot, and I know what the big hit points are, but I don't know yet how best to put it on the page. And because of the nature of this particular story, it seems Discovery Writing might be the best approach.

So here's seeing if I can plug through an entire end-to-end draft without having to stop for revisions.

The structure of this book is new. Not the dual-time thing; I've done that before. But all the previous Athena Fox books have been relentlessly linear narratives, presented in the "almost now" tense. That is, using an immediate past in which the narrator is reacting to what has just happened; as close as you can get to writing in present tense without being present tense.

That's always been something I've wrestled with in her stories. Since the narrator is in the moment, there has to be a reason in that moment for them to reflect on something from the past. It doesn't feel natural for Penny, in the middle of a fight scene, to say, "Oh and by the way I almost did cheer in college." It had to be triggered by something specific.

In the current narrative, I've actually got her ending a reflection with the realization that she had (in the almost-now of the narrative of the novel) been lost in a flashback. And there are going to be a lot of these. She explains early on that the old book she is using as a Grail Diary -- that is, a series of clues to follow across Paris -- jumps around in time. She even name-dropped Proust in that context. What she hasn't mentioned explicitly (because it would be far too meta) is that she is doing the same thing herself.

I've planned (in what little planning I have for actual chapter-and-scene breakdowns) that there are several plot-important events that will get revisited multiple times through the narrative, each time revealing a little more about what had happened, each time drawing a slightly different lesson.

(The first is her conversation with her friend and de-facto business manager Drea, as she plans the Paris trip. The second is her awful first night as her flight is delayed and the night clerk refuses to check her in to her hotel.)

This is happening, mind you, on top of what is essentially a lesson on historical method, as she analyses the memoir in terms of what Huxley knew when he was writing it (and what has changed since) and what his biases were. As well as changes in the names and places, of course. Not exactly new ground; there's even a bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark about how the length of a cubit depends on which text you are using.

But it does make it possibly challenging to read (I hope not too challenging). And challenging to write, and this is why I have the current opinion that I am best off just writing it rather than planning out every little bit to try to nail down when it will be "then" and when it will be "now."