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18/6/06 07:28I cannot recall ever having this much trouble with a story this early on. I've been working on it here and there for a couple months and barely reached six thousand words.
It is the structure. I have been puzzling about a couple of things:
1) How does one make a road trip story interesting? How does one dramatize inner conflict in a way that's not just some boring monologue, and how does one make a story interesting when the main character is mostly by herself?
2) How do I work out the structure of the flashbacks? At first I thought I wanted to do the trendy YA thing of intercutting present-tense present-time scenes with past-tense past-time scenes, but then I realized that didn't really work at all, unless it does and I haven't figured that out yet, and now I'm going to have to go back and rewrite the present-tense stuff.
So, I finally broke down and bought Robert McKee's Story in the hopes that it would fix my problems. It has helped, somewhat. That, and I think I'm just going to stop worrying about the past/present thing and write down everything in linear order and fix it up again later if it needs to be fixed up.
I probably would have given up if I didn't believe it was possible, nay, probable to write an awful YA novel and get it published. *g* Which is not to say I'm writing out of cold calculating commercial motives; I want to write this. I just don't want it to be so hard.
It is the structure. I have been puzzling about a couple of things:
1) How does one make a road trip story interesting? How does one dramatize inner conflict in a way that's not just some boring monologue, and how does one make a story interesting when the main character is mostly by herself?
2) How do I work out the structure of the flashbacks? At first I thought I wanted to do the trendy YA thing of intercutting present-tense present-time scenes with past-tense past-time scenes, but then I realized that didn't really work at all, unless it does and I haven't figured that out yet, and now I'm going to have to go back and rewrite the present-tense stuff.
So, I finally broke down and bought Robert McKee's Story in the hopes that it would fix my problems. It has helped, somewhat. That, and I think I'm just going to stop worrying about the past/present thing and write down everything in linear order and fix it up again later if it needs to be fixed up.
I probably would have given up if I didn't believe it was possible, nay, probable to write an awful YA novel and get it published. *g* Which is not to say I'm writing out of cold calculating commercial motives; I want to write this. I just don't want it to be so hard.