Mountains out of molehills
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012Down to the last two stories for Mad Ancestor — and yes, they’re the oldest ones. They’re the hardest to tweak because they’re the furthest away. But although I was a different person when I wrote them, was I a different writer? Yes and no. I haven’t lost my love of the gothic and the fancy, I’ve just read more books and learned how to write in other styles. My tastes haven’t changed so much as multiplied. So I can still go back there and write in that style, but when lines don’t work, I find myself struggling to come up with new lines that keep faith with the story. I end up having very pedantic conversations with myself.
Take the first line of The Art of Dying. The 1997 original, which I put back in the Mad Ancestor beta version:
“Mona Skye, the duellist and poet of tragic fame, lay in a fold of angular limbs on tasselled brocade cushions in a corner of the smoking-room beneath the Amber Tree café.”
I have two problems with this. It’s unwieldy (too many adjectives, clunky rhythm), and what does “lay in a fold of angular limbs” mean? I know it means she is angular and she is folded up, but I don’t think it’s that well expressed.
Skipping over a version or two, the first line in the New Weird version goes:
“Mona Skye, the duellist and poet of lately tragic fame, lay where her friends had placed her, on brocade cushions in a corner of the smoking room beneath the Amber Tree café.”
Losing “tasselled” helps. We don’t need to know that much about the cushions, and the word is a messy lump of consonants. I’m not sure about “lately”. It adds context to the situation and a more distant tone to the narrative voice, a hint of irony or impending irony — but it weakens the phrase as adverbs are wont to do. “Lay where her friends had placed her” — I don’t mind that, although Vali is her lover, and perhaps it’s a bit odd to refer to a lover as a friend. Swap “friends” for “companions” and you have extra syllables and a weaker word. The thesaurus doesn’t help.
Recent ideas: “lay in angular disarray/disarrangement” (hmmm…); “lay folded in her mink coat” (few words, handy visual, means what it says, might be a goer — I don’t love “mink” and “brocade” so close together, it makes me think of a home furnishings catalogue, but it does go with the decadent vibe); “lay in mink-wrapped ruin” (gah, no); “lay in a place not entirely of dishonour” (stop it, KJ — I might like the line, but the aim is to renovate, not rewrite, so let’s not drag the sentence in any new directions).
I’m trying this: “Mona Skye, the duellist and poet of tragic fame, lay in her mink coat, folded and frail, on brocade cushions in a corner of the smoking-room beneath the Amber Tree café.”
Rhythm’s ok. Has visuals. “Folded and frail” separates “mink” and “brocade”. I’ll have to change the later “wasted towards frailty”, but that’s ok. “Wasted towards debility” would work.
And that’s just the first damn sentence.
As I’ve said to myself before, I need to stick to a plan of changing it as little as possible, and using as much of the original as possible, since I did like it and so did other people. However, there are additions in the New Weird version that I’m fond of, e.g. “Illness, allowed to run rampant, had repaid the favour with curious gifts.” On the other hand, that line tells the reader right away that Mona has allowed herself to get so sick, spoiling the surprise in the flashback. Between the nice line and the surprise, I think the surprise is more important.
Talking it out like this is helpful, actually. And it’s not like I have these problems with every line in everything I write (ok, I do, but… no, really, I don’t. Just most lines…) — but when a line isn’t working, I can get very stuck. I should have a routine checklist: Meaning, relation to rest of story, structure, rhythm, strength, tone. Of course, improving one element can muck up another. Sometimes I like to screw with meaning — let the words take a detour around meaning, or make a strange jump — so there’s also the question of where I can get away with doing that. (Not in a first sentence.)
I have less of this sort of trouble when I use first-person POV, I suppose because the POV character limits the options for what can be written, so that there are fewer decisions to make.
