Paksworld

Yesterday’s workday turned into a mere shadow of itself thanks to something I ate that didn’t love me for some hours of the night before.  But still–progress.  Sort of.  I was going back over the work on Book II and realized that I had totally ignored a “conversation file.”

What, you might well ask, is a “conversation file?”

Sometimes when I’m stuck, and need to let two characters talk it out at length, I set up a conversation file where they can yammer at one another until I figure out what they’re both up to.    Attributions often don’t show, nor is there any surrounding atmospherics–no descriptions, no actions unless they burst out.   Just the voices talking to each other.   It’s  not written for readers, but for me, a working tool.    In this case, the conversation file has two conversations, one between Kieri and the elf who’s his tutor in elven magic (you’ll see some of this in Book I) and the other between Kieri and the Seneschal (ditto) on the subject of bones.

In working the chapters themselves, I’d forgotten that I’d written a fair bit of good stuff in the conversation file.  So I pulled it out, printed it, and then started comparing to the chapters.   When a conversation file takes off, it’s often very clean in POV and emotional resonance, but lacks (as mentioned) attributions, setting,  scene-context, and the communication carried nonverbally by facial expressions, movements, etc.

Sometimes a conversation can be opened up into an actual scene by adding these things; sometimes it’s merely an idea-generator.   But there are usually details I would miss when writing a scene within the chapter, even if most of the conversation changes, and I found several such things here.    Once more I’m questioning how much of Something Important to show in early chapters–how much the POV character knows being one boundary line, and how much the reader needs to know right then being the other.

It’s partly a matter of how far the argument goes the first time it starts–the conversation file took it a lot farther (but that gave me ideas for later chapters.)   What constraints would keep it from going that far, given the character of the arguers?   Am I still missing something, or not?    I should just print out all the POV chapters, where I can see more clearly how the POV character’s awareness grows and whether that rate is consistent with a) his intelligence and b) what distractors are in play.    But that’s a lot of printing, a lot of pages I then have to hole-punch and put in a binder.

I’m really glad Editor, when told of the new stuff coming, said she wouldn’t get to it until after the holidays after all.  I have one week…good thing the weather’s supposed to be nasty most of the week after today.l