Writing update 1/11
Jan. 11th, 2013 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficStill looking for a beta. Have given the scent to the dogs and sent them into the woods. Won't be long now.
I think I'm getting over my cold, since I'm coughing up chick-pea sized hunks of phlegm instead of the fuck-you bubble gum wads of the last week. So, next installment of Wicked Stepmother soonish. But first, this apocalypse story. It's funny. I started writing this brief sequence to explain an important character's point of view--it was just like "oh, this guy is so bad, oh, he'll get ya." Then I ended up having to split the story more or less in two to keep it from being a big fuck-you phone book. The first half was a little over 60,000 words, something like a novella. Well. A novella. What am I, French? So I had to gin it up and I went back to this backstory and added to it, rewrote it, made the guy a bit more sympathetic instead of badass. I also tried to have it reverberate with present-day events, Lost style, almost like there was a subconscious connection, an underlying i-don't-know-what.
The problem is, I got so wrapped up in this side-story that there ended up being too much of it to fit into the main story, at least at the pace I was going at. To get it all in, I had to stop the story proper dead right at the climax to get through this chunk of almost exposition. So I'm going to try to scatter this origin story a bit more thoroughly, get it all paced right and nice, and that is the day's work. That and watching Gangster Squad.
I also took my dog for a walk.
Anyway, what I like about this backstory is that most post-apocalyptic stories have protagonists who are fairly well-off. That makes sense. In a story about people who lose everything, you want them to have something to lose, and you want people that the middle-class audience can easily relate to. But I saw Winter's Bone and thought "okay, if this chick went into the Apocalypse, she's used to living with no support system, nothing, she would pwn me. She would be Mad Max, I would be the Gyro Captain at best." And that was the origin story of one character.
This is another, more racially-charged character, but he's coming from the same place. He was almost oppressed under the status quo, and now that it's gone, he has a set of opportunities he didn't have before. So when people are talking about rebuilding and restoring order, he's the one asking "To what?"
He was always hungry. Hungry so long it was just a thing, like the noise, part of his head. He wanted to have his fill for once. He walked out of Kings territory, out of Crips territory, out of gangland, and the first thing he noticed was that the sidewalks didn't have cracks in them.
There wasn't much Sam could see from the apartment's window, but he could see the balloon that marked Spongebob's Undersear Fun Palace, a big helium-filled icon of the cartoon character himself, held to the ground by a guywire and waving in the breeze. When the LAPD airships flew by (the rotors like the Man screaming at you), the wake made it look like Spongebob was having a seizure.
Now he went there, past the palm trees, the new cars, the men who wore polo shirts and slacks and leather shoes. His foot falling on the twenty like it was a pebble in his shoe. He came up through a parking lot bigger than the lobby of his building, went through the sliding doors that he'd never seen work anywhere else. Went up to the cash register, the guy in the yellow and green uniform who had a look in his eyes like Sam without the twenty, and paid for the buffet. He got back enough change to jangle in his pocket. It was a new sound to him.
He ate his fill. Stuffed his face at first, barely tasting it, just in wonderment at the feel of something warm but not hot in his mouth. He slowed down after that, but still shoveled the food in, barely chewing it before he let it into his stomach. It tasted good, though. Like things were supposed to taste.
It was early in the day, so the dining room of the Fun Palace was nearly empty. It was just him and a birthday party on its way from the swimming pool to a CGI movie where Adam Sandler played a rapping wizard. Sam watched as the leader of the pack opened presents. Guns that shot lasers, blades that made noise. They were playing at being him, Sam realized. His life was their games.
The parents noticed them watching. As Sam ate, he heard them whisper to a man in a Patrick costume. They thought he couldn't hear, but he'd grown up in a world where hearing a car's screeching tires was the difference between getting to a closet before the bullets flew and feeling one come through the mattress and into you.
He heard their 'concerns'. Their 'apologies'. He heard, 'if it wasn't too much trouble,' if he could be seated outside or by the arcade. Somewhere else. Anywhere they couldn't see him was fine. And though Sam barely showed up at school twice a week, he learned. There was a reason he had little and they had much. It was because they pushed back when he pushed up.
I think I'm getting over my cold, since I'm coughing up chick-pea sized hunks of phlegm instead of the fuck-you bubble gum wads of the last week. So, next installment of Wicked Stepmother soonish. But first, this apocalypse story. It's funny. I started writing this brief sequence to explain an important character's point of view--it was just like "oh, this guy is so bad, oh, he'll get ya." Then I ended up having to split the story more or less in two to keep it from being a big fuck-you phone book. The first half was a little over 60,000 words, something like a novella. Well. A novella. What am I, French? So I had to gin it up and I went back to this backstory and added to it, rewrote it, made the guy a bit more sympathetic instead of badass. I also tried to have it reverberate with present-day events, Lost style, almost like there was a subconscious connection, an underlying i-don't-know-what.
The problem is, I got so wrapped up in this side-story that there ended up being too much of it to fit into the main story, at least at the pace I was going at. To get it all in, I had to stop the story proper dead right at the climax to get through this chunk of almost exposition. So I'm going to try to scatter this origin story a bit more thoroughly, get it all paced right and nice, and that is the day's work. That and watching Gangster Squad.
I also took my dog for a walk.
Anyway, what I like about this backstory is that most post-apocalyptic stories have protagonists who are fairly well-off. That makes sense. In a story about people who lose everything, you want them to have something to lose, and you want people that the middle-class audience can easily relate to. But I saw Winter's Bone and thought "okay, if this chick went into the Apocalypse, she's used to living with no support system, nothing, she would pwn me. She would be Mad Max, I would be the Gyro Captain at best." And that was the origin story of one character.
This is another, more racially-charged character, but he's coming from the same place. He was almost oppressed under the status quo, and now that it's gone, he has a set of opportunities he didn't have before. So when people are talking about rebuilding and restoring order, he's the one asking "To what?"
He was always hungry. Hungry so long it was just a thing, like the noise, part of his head. He wanted to have his fill for once. He walked out of Kings territory, out of Crips territory, out of gangland, and the first thing he noticed was that the sidewalks didn't have cracks in them.
There wasn't much Sam could see from the apartment's window, but he could see the balloon that marked Spongebob's Undersear Fun Palace, a big helium-filled icon of the cartoon character himself, held to the ground by a guywire and waving in the breeze. When the LAPD airships flew by (the rotors like the Man screaming at you), the wake made it look like Spongebob was having a seizure.
Now he went there, past the palm trees, the new cars, the men who wore polo shirts and slacks and leather shoes. His foot falling on the twenty like it was a pebble in his shoe. He came up through a parking lot bigger than the lobby of his building, went through the sliding doors that he'd never seen work anywhere else. Went up to the cash register, the guy in the yellow and green uniform who had a look in his eyes like Sam without the twenty, and paid for the buffet. He got back enough change to jangle in his pocket. It was a new sound to him.
He ate his fill. Stuffed his face at first, barely tasting it, just in wonderment at the feel of something warm but not hot in his mouth. He slowed down after that, but still shoveled the food in, barely chewing it before he let it into his stomach. It tasted good, though. Like things were supposed to taste.
It was early in the day, so the dining room of the Fun Palace was nearly empty. It was just him and a birthday party on its way from the swimming pool to a CGI movie where Adam Sandler played a rapping wizard. Sam watched as the leader of the pack opened presents. Guns that shot lasers, blades that made noise. They were playing at being him, Sam realized. His life was their games.
The parents noticed them watching. As Sam ate, he heard them whisper to a man in a Patrick costume. They thought he couldn't hear, but he'd grown up in a world where hearing a car's screeching tires was the difference between getting to a closet before the bullets flew and feeling one come through the mattress and into you.
He heard their 'concerns'. Their 'apologies'. He heard, 'if it wasn't too much trouble,' if he could be seated outside or by the arcade. Somewhere else. Anywhere they couldn't see him was fine. And though Sam barely showed up at school twice a week, he learned. There was a reason he had little and they had much. It was because they pushed back when he pushed up.
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 05:18 am (UTC)I could read for you if you'd like. I imagine, if necessary, I could falsify some references as well. Well, unless I'd be getting paid, then I'd probably try to find some real ones.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 08:46 pm (UTC)E-mail address?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-17 12:05 am (UTC)