Thursday, April 30, 2009

you’re invited.

I’ve made a little life out of muttering on paper.—N.E. Bode, The Nobodies

If you like hopping about through the blogosphere, then hop over in this direction, and visit my new blog! (Well, relatively new. It has two months behind it.) It talks even more about writing than this one does, so if you like that sort of thing, come check it out. (I’m also hoping—eventually—to talk a lot more about pie, hence the title.)

I haven’t quite gotten the knack of keeping two blogs going at once (though some people have lots of blogs, and hooray for them!). I always feel like I’m keeping one blog out of the conversation… so, if you’re interested in what else I might be saying—all those secretive things about protagonists that you never knew you wanted to know!!—then come visit, leave a comment, and say hi.—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 04/30 at 03:49 PM
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finding the dark side of jenn

Villains are the salt in the soup of a story.—Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

Villains made history. Villains changed the destiny of the world.—J.V. Hart, Capt. Hook

Well, I pushed past last week’s exhaustion by that time-honored college technique: skimming. What a wonderful invention. Scan a page, trust that the good lines will leap out, and move on.

I am profoundly grateful for the chance to revise my work, to rewrite it basically from scratch. How many places in life can we literally rip things up and start again? Not many. So, goodbye to the Old Part Three! Paragraphs I’ll learn from, but hope never to see again.

It seems that every section of this rewrite has taught me something: in the first section, one of the characters closest to my protagonist became enormously interesting. Once I heard his voice clearly, Part One stood up and started running, and I just had to keep up. Then, with Part Two, the love interest got a complete personality overhaul—and off went Part Two.

With Part Three, I’m zeroing in on the main antagonist. I’m convinced that she’s the link to Part Three, and if I can just hear her voice clearly, if I can just get her right, then Part Three will yawn and stretch and then tell me precisely where we’re going. It’s a feeling I live for, now, when the book tells me just what it wants. (Oooh, this kind of talk makes non-writers shake their heads at me, but it’s still true, so shake away.)

The antagonist was okay in the earlier drafts, just… not very frightening. More like a cardboard box with mean black-crayon eyebrows. Not like a person of flesh and blood who could seriously give you nightmares, and that’s what we need for this story. Someone stronger than, well, cardboard. A lot stronger. Especially now that the rest of my cast is more dynamic.

She’s been mean and hostile and relatively powerful. Manipulative and cold-hearted. Perceptive. Changeable. But it’s just not good enough.

So now we’re peeling back the layers of her motivation, this character and I. Figuring out her past, and why she wants what she wants. (And what is that, exactly, after all?)

All my characters have a pinch of me in them: a bit of someone I know mixed in with something of me, or sometimes it’s just a lot of me, mixed with things I’d like to be. But then we come to the antagonist, and so far, no one I know really fits her. (I need to meet more warped people, perhaps? Or—maybe not. I value sleeping well at nights.)

But some very good writing advice says that antagonists see themselves as heroes. In their version of events, they are the ones struggling, the ones overcoming obstacles, working for a prize.

Now I’m looking at my story through those other eyes, trying to put my antagonist at the top, and see where she would go, what she would do. And since no one of my acquaintance works for her, I’m using myself as stand-in. How would I feel if these things happened to me? What would I be looking for? How would I behave? And how frightening and tooth-chillingly bad could I really be?

Whew! That will make me want to take a break from my writing chair. Let’s go have a latté... and I’ll spook the barista by using my new evil voice.—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 04/30 at 03:24 PM
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