Finally saw the new Star Wars yesterday. Wow.
Inspiring storytelling and characters with just enough pops of Star Wars nostalgia. Visible minority hero without making a thing of it. Female lead, without an over sexualized costume. Romantic elements that don’t infantilize the woman, but emphasize both partnership and caring, with both parties showing emotional and practical love for one another. Saving one another in turn. Ending with the girl, not the guy, fighting the final battle.
Wow.
I’m a little lost. I feel like I’m floundering in the midst of the story, and it’s a bigger push uphill to keep going right now than it has been since the holidays.
It’s not that I’m unsure what to write next, exactly - there is both the original plot outline (not reviewed for the last 20 chapters, but anyways…) as well as the growing pile of notes that I keep transplanting from chapter to chapter.
It’s more that the emotional and narrative force isn’t there. There’s an increasing number of things that I need to go back and deal with in rewrites. There’s a lack of amusing, delightful, exciting or comedic elements, which is weighing the story down, making it all drama and emo introspection, as well as the visceral horror elements.
There’s my fear of writing dialogue and expressing characterization properly as well… But as always, I feel like there’s no way but forward.
It’s hard balancing my experience - painstakingly slow, wrapped up in details - with the end reader experience, who goes through stretches in a matter of minutes or hours that take me weeks to write.
Or so I hope…
Also, the timelines are too divergent by far; I flip between everyone’s experiences as if they were concurrent, but forget to factor in stretches of time that pass, particularly empty time…
OK, that’s it. I’m going back and rewriting everything to first person present, with switching viewpoints. This third person past thing just isn’t working for me. When I get time…
Wednesday
Start time: 11:00 am
Location: couch/living room
Drinking: G&T