Re: Writing Trauma

Thanks again Patricia for such amazing and detailed feedback. This is
*so* helpful. Thanks to everyone who's written. There's not been a
bad piece of advice, and I don't feel like I'm sitting struggling with
these problems alone any more, which makes them easier to tackle.

Is this new composition, or revision? And do you mean that you are
constrained by what's already happened in this book, or are the constraints
based on the imaginary pre-book history?
It's revision. I have a complete first draft, but it needs some major
changes to work credibly. The constraints are imposed by the theme,
the world, the characters, and the existing explicity history.

I
suppose I could just accept this is the way I work best, but my fear is
I'll never be a 'good enough' author unless I can write a book every
year or two. The rate I'm going, that looks impossible.

THIS IS YOUR FIRST BOOK. Did you climb on your first bicycle at the age of
6 and immediately enter the Tour de France? Do you think it would be
reasonable to pick up a pair of toe shoes for the first time and immediately
sign on to dance with the Moscow Ballet?
Mmm. Good point. I do tend to beat myself up if I don't do things
perfectly first time.

Writing gets better with practice. It also gets faster with practice. Some
writers are faster than other writers. "Good" has *NOTHING* to do with
speed of production. If you are a very slow writer, you may produce a novel
every ten years, like Thomas Harris. If you are a very speedy writer, you
may produce a novel every ten weeks once you hit your stride. Most writers
fall somewhere in the middle. Publishers generally *like* to get one novel
a year like clockwork, but it's bad for them to get every little thing they
want.

Most people take a while to get through their first novel; it is not
representative of how they'll work later. You're still *learning* at this
stage, for Pete's sake. I took 4-1/2 years to get my first novel ms.
written. Most people seem to take two to five years to finish; ten is not
wildly unusual, and fifteen is not unheard of.
Okay, I thought I was just being slow. I'll change my expectations and
hopefully this will take the time pressure off. I think I've been
rushing it, and now I'm dealing with the consequences of that.

Okay, here's some detail. The story is told in the first-person from
the perspective of the protagonist, but is actually two stories
separated in time over two decades. Each odd chapter is 'now' (around
2024, set in Manhattan) and each even chapter is his past (~2004, set
in London, UK). The idea is the two tales resolve together at the end,
including some suprises. So, as events from the past unfold, aspects
of the front story begin to make sense. I'm happy with the 'back
story' (I don't think this is technically the correct term, because my
'back story' is explicit, but I've been using it).

"Back story" is usually a term for events that happen before/outside-of the
covers of the book -- history, whether personal or global, that affects the
events of the story but that isn't actually *part* of the story. Your
2004-plotline isn't backstory; it's a plotline set in the protagonist's
past.
Thanks.

I was fairly happy
with the front story. Together the two tales develop a good degree of
tension and great pace and then one of the characters in the front
story goes missing, just as one from the back story makes an
appearance. So, the pace comes to a grinding halt in the front story,
and it really shouldn't.

Um, what? Usually a character going missing cranks the tension *up*,
increasing the perceived pace. Unless you don't mean he "goes missing" from
the point of view of the characters, only that he picked up and moved to
Australia or some such, so that his absence has a perfectly boring in-story
explanation, while from an authorial point of view, he's "missing."
Yes, that's why I plotted it, but having to find her again, is largely
a passive process, because the prot relies heavily on help from a
hacker friend, leaving the protagonist to fiddle, powerless. I've
realised this is the problem. I have to keep the hunt with the
protagonist, and stop relying on an external source of help to move
things along.

Second, the thinness of the characters -- this is often *not* actually about
what you know of the characters' past, whether immediate or long-ago. I
have one character who's been hanging around in my head for *years*, who
won't *tell* me anything about his past, but boy, does he have
personality... "Thinness" is usually a symptom of the writer either not
knowing the characters very well, or not knowing how to get them down on
paper. By "knowing the characters well," I mean the way you'd know a person
in real life -- you might very well not know much about their past history,
but if you're good friends, you know their favorite restaurants and the kind
of humor they like and how they'll react to certain things (good and bad)
and maybe whether they get up grumpy in the morning or annoyingly cheerful.
Stuff like that. *Personality*.
Great point. I could do with writing some more explicit notes that
define their personalites more. I'll also look at doing the
analysis/diagnosis you suggested. I think I've got to the essence of
the issue here, but I am going to go back and look at the whole plot
again from the beginning.

Thanks again Patricia, and everyone else for their comments too. This
has been invaluable.

Gareth

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