The Generic Heroine

[elfs]

I'm trying to do a Seinfeld Chain around writing the Caprice Starr first draft, and I'm finding that it's working, for the most part. The rule is simple: I get to maintain my chain if I give Caprice 1000 words. I have a simple script for word count that tells me where I am in the word count process, and I'm not allowed to cheat. If I do 2,000 words one day, that doesn't mean I get to take the next day off. I still have to write 1,000 words the next day. I've blocked out a three-month calendar for September through November in my work journal and I'm X'ing out each day as it goes along to keep track of my progress. My hope is to not break the Sienfeld Chain for at least 91 days. If I do that, I'll have a rough draft.

I'm still using the reward mechanism: if I finish the 1,000 words of Caprice Starr, I'm allowed to write something else. Yesterday I went on a tear and did 2,000 words in less than 20 minutes while Caprice watched her contact in the warrens, Dr. Ted Amaljsingh, rescue yet another suicide attempt and then go on a rant (probably due to be cut) about why attempted suicide is so common, but actual suicide is so rare. The poison the victim attempted to commit suicide with will eventually become an early plot element. Unfortunately, the tear took all the brain juice out of me and I didn't have anything left with which to write something else.

My concern, though, is that Caprice is boring. I'm reading in parallel to this both Basilisk Station and The Vor Game, to get a feel for the two bestsellers out there and the approaches Bujold and Weber use to establish their characters.

Caprice has so much go for her: her undying loyalty to Humanity-- a nebulous term that will get her into trouble again and again throughout the series-- her tragic past, her secret (even from her) origins, her current troubling assignment. And yet so far she's not very deep. I need to get deeper into her head. And it's funny; I have no trouble synching up with competent characters, but I don't have enough of Caprice yet.

I could joke and say that she's an Asimov character tried and true-- all surface, no depth, a puzzlebox mechanism playing out her role. But that wouldn't be fair. I want the reader to empathize with her even as we disagree with her initial motives and attitudes. I just don't want her to be generic, y'know?

Comments

[blaisepascal]

I must admit that with life, a largish friends list, etc I haven't been reading your journal as closely as possible.

What is the intended "market" for Caprice Starr? Is it going to be a piece of novel-length fiction on the Pendorwright Project page? Do you intend to shop it around to agents and publishers to get it published? I guess another way of phrasing it is: when it's done, how will I be able to read it?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's okay; I imagine people with big friends' list don't track quite so much as they feel they should. Life is limited.

Anyway, after twenty years of banging out the Journal Entries, my friends and fans have convinced me to try and write something meatier for professional sale. Caprice Starr is one of the few "for sale" works that I've tinkered with over the years, and I think it's a solid idea, so I've decided to go for it and try and get it done this year. If it works, I have a six-book series that will be solid, and the experience will be good if I ever decide to go back and finish my other books, Sarah's Reason (YA novel in an STL universe), Toby and Kasserine (19th century fin d'siecle story with furries (as a metaphor for race) and the return of magic), or Moon Sun & Dragons (alt. history/alien invasion set in 16th century France), or Janae (think 14th century European "great game," a'la Dorothy Dunnett, but with Jedis).

Caprice Starr is a "reboot" of the Lucky Starr series (with the serial numbers filed down); set 50 years after the events in the original series but with a more "up to date" timeline: Sirius is the only other inhabited starsystem, but it's inhabited by posthumans; Sol is a fractured multi-polity place where "The Science Council" exists primarily to prevent an outbreak of posthumanism, to ensure that Terra is for Terrans, a principled dedication to "Humanity," no matter how impoverished or bleak human lives might be. The universe is STL: no faster-than-light, no force fields, no etherwave. Agents of the Science Council have two primary responsibility: to identify and regulate precursors to "outbreaks of transhumanism," and to limit the access people have to technologies that might enable them to uplift themselves out of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to."

Sirius isn't making this easy: they bombard Sol with radio transmissions with instructions on how to build transhuman technologies: Intelligence Amplification, Nootropics, Artificial Intelligences, Nanotech biorestructuring, a wikipedia of bootstrapping. "Sirian-inspired" outbreaks are the big bugaboo, but most outbreaks are more accidental.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

I don't like the way Seinfeld emphasizes "Don't Break the Chan!" Stuff happens, and sometimes a writer is going to miss a day. What happens if you do happen to break the chain? Do you go to Hell when you die?

Much more important is the practice, if the chain happens to be "broken," is to get back on the horse and keep writing.

A much better algorithm, in my experience, is "Today, I'm going to hit today's writing goal." Do this every day, and your wordcount will grow.

I'm speaking from my own practice, since the beginning of the year, of writing five hundred words every morning. I've missed a few days here and there -- like yesterday, for example -- but nevertheless I'm about forty-five days ahead of quota since January 3.

(I'm old-school. I write my daily portion in a scratchfile, and type "wc ~/Desktop/scratch.txt" at a shell prompt to check how I'm doing.)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

But what constitutes breakage? I classify it as missing a 1000 word mark in a day. And, y'know, I'm kinda with him on the idea that the only justification for breaking the chain is something life-threatening, like hospitalization for you or a loved one. If it gets me to my 7000 words a week mark, I'm all for it, because that's what I want to do.

[seraphs-folly.livejournal.com]

Thanks thats a really good tool for me right now: I'm trying to get through some writing for my own website ahead of the publication of my first book. I've been finding that and any writing incredibly uphill because I'm a little stressed and anxious about the publication process. I used to write professionally for websites (and I went on to newspaper editing) and suddenly cant write a sentence that doesnt seem like it clunks! >.<

I suspect you've given me the perfect magic bullet for getting myself focused again *most grateful*

p.s: we totally have cat twins. Your Dinah is the spitting image of Ning the Merciless.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I have trouble getting into my gaming characters sometimes. You sit there with this piece of paper that's supposed to be a full-blown person and go "who the heck is this?". But then I start playing and, as time goes on, I learn how she reacts to situations and get to know her and what makes her tick.

I bet that after awhile you'll have a better handle on who Caprice is and then when you go back to revise you can add more stuff that illustrates that to your readers.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

PS - check out the first books of those series again. I didn't know much about those characters until I'd read another book or two. Again, it's about growing the relationship with the character - whether you're the reader or the writer.