Hello,
My novel-writing has been coming on well recently, the note I made at the start of the week unlocked a huge amount of content and I hit the 20,000 word mark yesterday. I’m still in the early part of the book and have been surprised that I’ve gone to some of the dark places that I have. I knew there would be some unpleasant moments along the journey but, well, I’ve surprised myself.
I have been thinking about conveniences, contrivances and clichés. To me all narratives are a series of conveniences, events that happen to characters are times that propel them forward through the story. Luke buying 3PO and R2 is a convenience. I also feel that these events fall under the suspension of disbelief umbrella and are protected from deep scrutiny.
Contrivances on the other hand seem like false godlike manipulation, forcing events to occur in a particular way to further the plot (I’d throw almost all of the Bond films into this category).
Clichés are a strange thing because they only become such through familiarity. I don’t necessarily believe they are a bad thing and can allow for some clever subversion. I’m particularly fond of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 4, Episode 12 – A New Man) that finds the character Ethan Rayne hiding in a crypt and performing a sinister monologue after Giles leaves, only for Giles to pop back in and interrupt saying, “Is someone…?”. Buffy always worked best when it dissected the tropes of cliché.
This is a lot of talk about film and TV, my apologies.
My protagonist is called Evin and late in the story I intend for her to meet someone who I’m not looking forward to writing. He has always been there and is built into the final part of Evin’s story. Yesterday I wrote a section where she met an unpleasant character, intended to be a bit throw away role. I gave him a body, named him, surrounded him with people, and let him speak. And I really like the character, in the way that he’s a total bastard and I hate him. This left me wondering, would Evin meeting the same character again later spill awkwardly into contrivance? Would you read his reappearance and not believe that he would be there? The world I’ve created would not limit that sort of character to one person. My gut is that it would not be the same person she will meet again later, that I will work out a different personality and try to find a different way to be sinister.
Part of me is sad though, this horrific human got two pages and I can’t stop thinking about him.
– Andrew
A.R. Davidson's Writing Blog 