Losing the plot

[louiselux]

Arrgh, my story!

I do not know what is happening next in it, and it's extremely vexing and frightening. I just have to keep on going through this difficult part and hope it comes out right. I just rewrote a huge chunk of it today and don't want to have to backtrack again. I have all these words and I just need to jiggle them around till they make sense. Possibly I should go and do my ironing and not worry about it anymore tonight. *takes a deep breath*

Recently, I was telling emungerethat I never thought about transitions in stories and that they seemed to happen easily. Predictably, transitions are now laughing in my face and refusing to cooperate. How many times can I have a character fall asleep and wake up as a way to move the story forward? So far it's happened about four times. Gahh. Transition-fu, I do not have it.

Comments

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the baby-shaped time vortex

That is a good point actually. Maybe you don't need a smooth transition if the anchor points of the story are in place and are clear. Although now I'm not sure what I mean by anchor points - maybe time and place and strong characterisation?

[wedjateye.livejournal.com]

An anchor point for me is something I can visualise/imagine clearly. It seems to take on a reality of its own, so writing that scene is more like describing it rather than making it up. Hopefully that means that a good sense of time/place and good characterisation result.

Another way of expressing it is that the anchor points feel 'true' to me. I believe in them. So even if point B seems totally disconnected from point A that preceeded it, I know they are both true and it makes it much easier for me to work out how it had to have happened.

Most of my anchoring revolves around emotion - the emotional place the characters end up at. I still feel like a twat talking about something I don't actually do at present but I like talking about writing so I'm telling my inner critic to shove off. I haven't really written anything that revolves around action or, you know, much in the way of actual plot, so possibly I'd find transitions harder there.

And pretty much off topic (except it was obviously something you believed in and that made it work despite its improbability) how did the cow end up in the tree in Over the Moon? I think I meant to ask you in one of your memes and didn't actually get time to type the question. Did you have a back story you made up for that? Was it something you read about somewhere? Were you just comfortable writing it even if it could only be explained in a metaphorical way?

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

An anchor point for me is something I can visualise/imagine clearly. It seems to take on a reality of its own, so writing that scene is more like describing it rather than making it up.

I really like that idea and I've been thinking about it a lot in the last few days, as I'm in the middle of a story and I realised I did not have my anchor points sorted out! There were lots of things that were muddy and unclear, mostly in terms of plot. So maybe anchor points are plot points too.

Talking of which! This totally relates back to the cow in the tree. I think now that the reason it works is because I utterly believed in the cow in the tree and I know exactly how it got there! So there are small things in the story that reference that secret bit of authorial knowledge. Maybe this embedding it in the story is what makes the cow believable?

The cow was left there by a much bigger dragon, on its way to India, possibly to go and live with Kougaiji. It met Jeep and left it there for him, as a token of its affection. So, Jeep does know how it got there and there are small things in the story that suggest this. I did get the idea of an inexplicable cow in the tree first off, as a weird plot, and made the back story up while writing.

[wedjateye.livejournal.com]

Maybe this embedding it in the story is what makes the cow believable?

It almost certainly accounts for at least some of it. There is a different feel reading something improbable when the author believes it, as compared to when it is merely a convenient deus ex machina. That's how I knew you believed in the cow and why I was so curious about whether that belief sprang from backstory or not.

I imagine well written stories as being like an aerial view of mountainous terrain, where the low-lying areas are obscured by fog. The peaks are the anchor points. The back story is in the valleys. Even though the peaks may appear disconnected on cursory inspection, everything works because the author knows the entire landscape intimately.

Not every story is constructed like that, of course, but I prefer stories where not everything is spelled out.

One of the benefits I find in writing non-chronologically and with anchor points in mind, is that foreshadowing and coherency seem to take care of themselves.