Dichroic Johnson Is Right.

[mrissa]

(Never mind the subject line; I'm having a "Blazing Saddles" moment.)

In a comment to my last entry, dichroic says: You know how you always say you're really a novel writer rather than a short-story writer? Is that really correct, or are you really a *novels* writer, as in sequels and trilogies and serials, at heart? Seems like you get issued a lot of very big stories to tell.

Crud.

I think the lady's onto something.

I think the essential problem is with how I think of stories in the first place. I've talked about this before, how I am not a "plot" writer or a "character" writer but a relationship writer. I see (and "see" is wrong; "feel" is the verb, but that carries connotations of "emote" when what I want is "perceive") fiction as a gravitational system. A relativistic gravitational system, not a Newtonian one: spacetime warps around characters to different degrees. (You can take the girl out of the lab....) I've said all this before, I know, so I won't go into it much more unless someone has questions about what the heck I mean.

The problem -- and in terms of starting to write, of having stories to write, this is not a problem at all -- is that this is not a static system. When you start them up, you're pretty much going until the heat death of the universe. Or at least until the sun goes kerblooey. There are lots of interesting stories to tell before the sun goes kerblooey, in most situations. ("Kerblooey" is a technical physics term.) I don't tend to show up five seconds before a star goes nova and write the last five seconds of the solar system. Relationships do interesting things after they've averted disaster once, or after they haven't. Which is why I'm writing the Carter Hall stories: yes, the Tam Lin story is an interesting one, and I will enjoy writing The True Tale of Carter Hall when I get to it, but -- for heaven's sake, those people are still wandering around with each other, only now there's a baby born to save her (or his, but in this case, Jessica's) father from the Queen of Air and Darkness's tithe to hell, and you can't tell me the way the parents relate to that baby, the way that baby relates to the world, is of no interest. Shoemaker-Levy 9 was very dramatic, but what Jupiter did afterwards was fascinating.

So I think I am more prone to committing series because of this. Because I don't think in terms of plot arcs so much as plot conic sections in a gravitationally warped spacetime. I think this may be an inherent feature of how I deal with story. Even when I know where to stop telling the specific novel -- which I think I do pretty well -- it's still a dynamic system in my head.

I'm not entirely sure how this relates to ksumnersmith and matociquala's entries about stories and how they spin, because the snapshots of these dynamic gravitational entities -- or, in normal language, these novels -- feel like rocks in my head. The rocks are really representative of at least four dimensions of system. But also they are rocks. That are novels.

Umm. Maybe I will go sit in the corner and sing quietly to myself now.

Comments

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I relate, except for me it's not fiction, it's theology. A not insignificant part of my vocational ambivalence is knowing that once the sermons etc. start, they're not going to stop, because I barely have them under rein now. And I've seen what fiction does to your writer brain. Do I want to have a preacher brain? And if I don't, what's the alternative?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I really don't. But we've talked about one venue for you to talk about it, at least.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Yep, and it's appreciated, though much-procrastinated.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I found myself nodding in agreement while reading this post. I tend to let things like plot, theme, and characters take care of themselves. I like to write short stories about people (which is not the same, at least to my mind, as characters) and their interaction with the world around them (typically a world with SF, fantasy, or supernatural horror elements) and with other people. Granted, you and I don't approach story exactly the same way (because we are different writers), but I think we approach it closely enough that I understand (from my own frame of reference) what you are saying.

Did that make any sense?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think so....

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It hasn't gone anywhere yet, but I do have a vague notion of writing my own Tam Lin sequel story. Because really, do you think the Queen of Faerie's just going to leave them alone after that? I don't.

But in general, I think I'm less inclined to sequels than you are. Yes, stuff happens after the end of the story, but that doesn't mean it's a full-blown story in its own right. It's why I stopped after one sequel to Doppelganger -- yeah, I could foresee a situation after the end of the second novel, but a situation does not a story make.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Queen is going to leave them alone, either. Also other less-than-savouries might have had their attention drawn.

Stuff after the end of the story isn't automatically its own full-blown story, no. Sometimes the planetary system goes back to ordinary orbits.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

We need to make an exact copy of the town, right down to the orange roof on Howard Johnson's outhouse.

The thing is, this way - as I am sure you are probably aware, although I can't say if you are aware at it in the spiral edges of your brain or the globular star cluster at the center - lies madness.

I know you know that story never ends never never never. What concerns me is that I don't know if you are willing to let the chunks of it that you TELL have a beginning and an end, but (unless you are writing Finnegans Wake) they have to.

You HAVE to slice off a chunk and say "This is an arc because I declare it to be so," even knowing that the cut bleeding ends are going to be aesthetically unsatisfying, to say the least, no matter how gracefully you slice it.

There's no reason the dynamic system can't continue on as an intact beauty in your head - god knows I have some of those in my head which are just too damned big to ever write down - but the visible output, by necessity, should probably be more like A Selection of Interesting Bits Taken From a Continuous Whole Which is Even More Fascinating, as a Whole, Than the Bits Shown Here But Which Would Be the Work of Several Lifetimes.

I suspect this post states the obvious several times. I apologize. Braindumpy this morning.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is novel #8, hon. The only one you've read is also the only one that's the first half of a two-volume story. The rest have ends. So I think I've had a little practice at slicing.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Oh. Heh. I wasn't actually thinking about what I had or hadn't read at all. Had I thought about that one I would have excepted it - I realize it's SUPPOSED to leave off in the middle. No, it just sounded to me like you were reluctant to pull chunks out of Very Big Stories ... so maybe I misunderstand the original nature of the musing.

Braindumpy, cranky (not due to causes proximal to this thread), AND lousy at interpretation today. Maybe I should just go back to bed.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, I am several novels worth of "not reluctant." But it's a little daunting to realize how much Very Big Story is out there to be sliced.

Hope you're feeling less cranky.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be such a rabble rouser! On the other hand, it's kind of nice to think of a writer for whom "And then they got married and lived happily ever after" isn't an end - or is maybe the end of that particular arc but not of all the stories. Because it certainly hasn't worked that way in my life.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And the stories that follow it don't have to be "and then he smelled funny and they got divorced" or anything like that, not anything close to all the time.

How people are when they've committed to being with each other is way more interesting to me than how they are getting to the commitment.

[beth-bernobich.livejournal.com]

Because I don't think in terms of plot arcs so much as plot conic sections in a gravitationally warped spacetime.

Sister!

*singing quietly to myself in another corner*

ever after

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

You know I like this.

You also just got me remembering (yet again) how very much story happened after the Benni minn.

Re: ever after

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Minn?

Re: term of affection

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Literally "my" but there's more of a "dear" implied. One of those odd things you pick up. My Amma use to call me "Angela minn" and I picked it up for Benni.

Pronounced a bit like mean but shorter and up in your nose. Both Benni and the floofs used to get called into the house with something sounded like "kam-thur, Name min." That and the endearment sort of stuck when we came back.

; ) more than you wanted to know!

Re: term of affection

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. My family does that, too, but I didn't pick it up in context (also with "min" rather than "minn" spelling).