Par for the Course

I should not have been hanging out in the write-o-sphere. Too many nice discussions on Quora, videos on YouTube, stuff like that.

The scene I am on is a perfect place to step back from all lectures, all the time.

Already, I was picking this as a place to come down hard with five-senses, but that was for other reasons. Anyhow, this seems like a good scene to try to communicate thematic points without someone sitting down and talking about them -- and this include using the narrative voice of my protagonist.

How exactly do I get across concepts like dérive in a 2,000 word scene of French people running around an office park?

Oh, but that's not the worst.

In the great battle between Pantser and Outliner it is recognized by both that discovering and bringing out the themes of your book, as well as the essential conflicts, core character development, and related deep-structural elements, happens in rewrites. So no surprise; I am changing what is on the table and where I want to focus.

Originally, the internal conflict that drives Penny for this book was whether to take up the mantle of hero. Amelia came on board first as an ordinary tourist to act as a mirror, reflecting the way that Penny has grown from naive tourist to experienced world traveler (as much as she might protest). She was useful as someone who understood the arts and could turn inner monologue into dialogue. Still talking-heads lectures, but one step more in the direction of being actually interesting. With that in there, it was a natural step to let he be a comic book geek, at least enough to start throwing the hero label in Penny's direction.

But on reflection this didn't work. She just got done fighting yakuza and nearly dying in the snow to answer that one. And looking into the mirror of a goddess, which should really finish off any questions of appearance versus reality. At least for a while!

So where her conflict is, has been changing as I write. It was largely behind the several rewrites, of what has become a process so long I may end up with cork-covered walls and an absinthe addiction before it is over.

And when I hit the parkour scene, I realized my first take (she's physically afraid of the challenge) is defensible but doesn't advance the important themes.

So I'm trying to define the themes of the book, find ways of bringing them out in this scene, and do it without spelling anything out with talking heads and idiot lectures. Right. This may take a few more weekends!