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Of all the novels that I have written, "Shattered Jade" is the one that stands out in my memory with an intense fondness totally disproportionate to its objective qualities, like a child's crayon drawing on the fridge. It's the kind of thing that was very much a product of me being 20 or 21 years old (you would call it "teenage," but I was a late bloomer in a lot of respects), mostly the fact that the entire thing was held together by a tangle of backstory melodrama and unrequited love, viz:
A is in love with B, who has zero feelings for her.
A used to be involved with C, who is still in love with her, but she never had more than friendly feelings for him.
A and D had an extremely intense relationship that ended bitterly but it wasn't either of their faults really.
B and E seem to genuinely love each other, which makes A suspicious, because E is the bad guy, as demonstrated through (*wince*) plot device rape.
...And C, D, and E are all siblings.
...And as a result of the Inciting Incident, they all live in the same house. (They basically never leave that house. I think this was because I really wanted to write a gothic novel, and also because if you are writing a novel in Montreal in November, never ever going outside seems like a decent idea.)
Oh, hey, did somebody read through the ending of Song of the Wind and Trees the previous year? Someone did.
(Song of the Wind and Trees is not to blame for the sibling thing. That's all on Utena.)
It was all so tragic and so beautiful in my head!
Alas, I doubt I will ever figure out a way to take it apart and put it back together again in a way that really is tragic and beautiful; I'd ditch the plot device rape in a hot minute, and pare back the tangle of backstory melodrama, and then there's not much left but some fairly standard evil-dude epic-fantasy plotting.
But someday, I think, I will write a story about the genius loner mad scientist, half-broken by living in a family that doesn't understand her, and the fiercely blunt and protective and purehearted outsider girl (I BLAME EVERYTHING ON UTENA), and the things that break them apart, and the things that pull them back together again. And maybe just a little evil-dude epic-fantasy plotting.
(Wait. I still want to write this, but... I just realized that "genius loner mad scientist and fiercely blunt and protective and purehearted outsider girl" should be the character concepts for Izzy and Thea's characters in the Dungeons & Dragons knockoff they're playing in the novel I just finished. It can be a great injoke like when Simon Snow turned into a real novel.)
...Gosh, I'm glad BBC Sherlock wasn't around when I was an Impressionable Young Thing.
A is in love with B, who has zero feelings for her.
A used to be involved with C, who is still in love with her, but she never had more than friendly feelings for him.
A and D had an extremely intense relationship that ended bitterly but it wasn't either of their faults really.
B and E seem to genuinely love each other, which makes A suspicious, because E is the bad guy, as demonstrated through (*wince*) plot device rape.
...And C, D, and E are all siblings.
...And as a result of the Inciting Incident, they all live in the same house. (They basically never leave that house. I think this was because I really wanted to write a gothic novel, and also because if you are writing a novel in Montreal in November, never ever going outside seems like a decent idea.)
Oh, hey, did somebody read through the ending of Song of the Wind and Trees the previous year? Someone did.
(Song of the Wind and Trees is not to blame for the sibling thing. That's all on Utena.)
It was all so tragic and so beautiful in my head!
Alas, I doubt I will ever figure out a way to take it apart and put it back together again in a way that really is tragic and beautiful; I'd ditch the plot device rape in a hot minute, and pare back the tangle of backstory melodrama, and then there's not much left but some fairly standard evil-dude epic-fantasy plotting.
But someday, I think, I will write a story about the genius loner mad scientist, half-broken by living in a family that doesn't understand her, and the fiercely blunt and protective and purehearted outsider girl (I BLAME EVERYTHING ON UTENA), and the things that break them apart, and the things that pull them back together again. And maybe just a little evil-dude epic-fantasy plotting.
(Wait. I still want to write this, but... I just realized that "genius loner mad scientist and fiercely blunt and protective and purehearted outsider girl" should be the character concepts for Izzy and Thea's characters in the Dungeons & Dragons knockoff they're playing in the novel I just finished. It can be a great injoke like when Simon Snow turned into a real novel.)
...Gosh, I'm glad BBC Sherlock wasn't around when I was an Impressionable Young Thing.