Copyright © 2013 Bob R Bogle
I think last night I hit upon a strategy for writing the next iteration of this novel.
The first step will to be to generate a rather massive tree-like structure that connects all my many story threads not in time but in space. What matters most is the intersecting locations, or nodes, where the paths cross. This will take quite some time. Afterwards I'll be rewriting everything to conform to the new blueprint; this will include generating a great deal of new material (although I've had much of it in mind for a few years now), and also transforming much of the material already set down in the first draft into a new form, especially taking expository material and relocating it in the actions and memories of heretofore unwritten scenes and characters. When all this is accomplished, the second draft will be complete.
Eventaully, in a third draft, I should be able to cut and move big chunks of the massive text around into a more aesthetically-pleasing presentation, even as I'm honing and loping down the word count. How long will all this take?
Umm . . . probably a couple years.
(I'm certain to also be writing some other stuff during this time frame.)
What I'm beginning to do is something like a paleontologic dig into a communal dinosaur grave. I've got to label endless mixed bone fragments that constitute acts and scenes and episodes and visions and hallucinations all told from a myriad of points of view. Only when the labeling is done and some sort of system emerges can I begin to shape it all into an aesthetically-pleasing display.
ReplyDeleteSpent the day cataloging notes. Up through the end of 1858. Getting some plot-architecture ideas. Powerful stories with characters very similar to the present day. Sleepy.
ReplyDeleteI woke up much too early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, having conceived of another technique to use in re-writing this book, and that is to create a series of chapters which I think of as 'ganglionic tangles.' This will work something like the Wandering Rocks episode of Ulysses, only extending through space but more importantly through time, allowing me to knit my many story lines together at critical nodes. For example, I can do this on the shore of the Missouri River at Leavenworth, at Lexington, MO, and at St Louis, again on the Mississippi River at Helena, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is to have multiple characters across time weaving in and out of the landscape, looking at the same views. For example, at Leavenworth, Max looks out into the river, then Tom on the soldier-crowed boat looks from the river to the shore where his distant descendant will one day stand, then as the boat floats down the river he looks over the hills where he will one day be buried, then a few blocks behind Max we see the Ewing clan having a party for Sherman's newly-arrived wife and children, then a few blocks away we see Bull Summer and JEB Stuart drinking and complaining about the Kansasans, etc.