Villains and Soundtracks
Oct. 15th, 2006 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseAs Colin mentioned on his livejournal, it's been a little windy this last week. (That's our barbecue and not-fence our neighbur's car and car-shelter.) We had our first snow, the warning shot that always crops up at some point in October; it comes, spreads a thin layer of white, and melts within a day or two (Which it has indeed done). Just enought o remind one what's coming.
Between Friday and yesterday, the motivation of three out of the four villains has popped (A la story kernel, per this entry). Now, I'd thought I had all their motivations down already. I knew what each one wanted: one wants to destroy a garden and the gardener, one wants to possess (in every non-sexual sense of the word) the protagonist; one wants a big inconvenience out of her life, but doesn't much care how. Not that these wants are always clear; the gardener is the master of oblique and his opponent almost never talks to the protagonist, and the third villain is so minor I could let her seem one dimensional (I thought) and not feel too guilty, even if I knew there was more to the story than she lets on.
Except suddenly, Friday, I finally figured out what the garden is, what it does, and therefore why it has to go. And Saturday, an idle thought about the third villain, the one-dimensional one, suddenly spun her around and told me there was a whole secret she hadn't been telling before, that links her to the second villain - and makes the second villain's apparant obsession even more logical than it already was. This was a "holy crap" moment to end all such moments. This wasn't just a story kernel - it was what they mean when they talk about inspiration. it would give the whole story a very new perspective.
Problem: I don't currently have any way for the protagonist to learn this particular backstory. He goes through events with only a basic understanding of anything other than the surface motives; half the time, he's got problems enough trying to actually understand the motivations and msitakes of his friends to pay attention to what the villains are really like udnerneath their varied surfaces. (Especially as this isn't by any means a traditional quest, nor are the villains the kind you vanquish by possessing the right plot coupons, or the right answers to the right questions. His emotional state is more his enemy than the malevolent figures. Of all of them, only villain four gets any kind of a comeuppance; and he, far as I can tell, hasn't got any hidden secrets or unsuspected backstories.)
So now I have something that i think would make a huge difference to what it all means, and makes a story that made sense but had villains who felt a bit cardboard into a story where even the people the protagonist thinks of as unremitting evil have some reason for doing what they do... and I don't know how to let the reader know it's there.
Augh!
______________________
For my own edification:
Soundtrack for Raising the Storm: A great deal of electric-trad Nordic music (But only Garmarna's Hildegard Von Bingen; their others are reserved for other writing projects), Jerry Alfred and The Medicine Beat, Ulali, Heather Dale, Luka Bloom, Emmylou Harris, the Narnia and Two Towers soundtracks, and a strange quantity of British Traditional fare (More Maddy Prior and Jim Moray than June Tabor and Kate Rusby -- their work is associated with the Serpent Prince), minor key harmonies and other odd group-singing particularly desirous.
Soundtrack for this project -- okay, okay, it's Bird of Dusk, and damn Finno for insisting on possessing my brain again: The Pogues, Boiled in Lead, Midnight Oil, the Levellers, Rush, Clannad (especially Sirius) Tom Waits, Julian Lennon, and Richard Thompson's "King of Bohemia". Queen and the Beatles would be in there if I owned any. Nightwish has added itself to the list since it's on the most relevant of my Pandora stations (which is actually called "Peter Gabriel"). Oysterband used to be on the list, but doesn't seem to be this draft around.
Crossovers: Stan Rogers, Sarah Slean, Peter Gabriel, Loreena McKennitt (though admittedly, Storm is more about her later work, and Bird more early.) I haven't tried Emmylou Harris, but I wonder.
Between Friday and yesterday, the motivation of three out of the four villains has popped (A la story kernel, per this entry). Now, I'd thought I had all their motivations down already. I knew what each one wanted: one wants to destroy a garden and the gardener, one wants to possess (in every non-sexual sense of the word) the protagonist; one wants a big inconvenience out of her life, but doesn't much care how. Not that these wants are always clear; the gardener is the master of oblique and his opponent almost never talks to the protagonist, and the third villain is so minor I could let her seem one dimensional (I thought) and not feel too guilty, even if I knew there was more to the story than she lets on.
Except suddenly, Friday, I finally figured out what the garden is, what it does, and therefore why it has to go. And Saturday, an idle thought about the third villain, the one-dimensional one, suddenly spun her around and told me there was a whole secret she hadn't been telling before, that links her to the second villain - and makes the second villain's apparant obsession even more logical than it already was. This was a "holy crap" moment to end all such moments. This wasn't just a story kernel - it was what they mean when they talk about inspiration. it would give the whole story a very new perspective.
Problem: I don't currently have any way for the protagonist to learn this particular backstory. He goes through events with only a basic understanding of anything other than the surface motives; half the time, he's got problems enough trying to actually understand the motivations and msitakes of his friends to pay attention to what the villains are really like udnerneath their varied surfaces. (Especially as this isn't by any means a traditional quest, nor are the villains the kind you vanquish by possessing the right plot coupons, or the right answers to the right questions. His emotional state is more his enemy than the malevolent figures. Of all of them, only villain four gets any kind of a comeuppance; and he, far as I can tell, hasn't got any hidden secrets or unsuspected backstories.)
So now I have something that i think would make a huge difference to what it all means, and makes a story that made sense but had villains who felt a bit cardboard into a story where even the people the protagonist thinks of as unremitting evil have some reason for doing what they do... and I don't know how to let the reader know it's there.
Augh!
______________________
For my own edification:
Soundtrack for Raising the Storm: A great deal of electric-trad Nordic music (But only Garmarna's Hildegard Von Bingen; their others are reserved for other writing projects), Jerry Alfred and The Medicine Beat, Ulali, Heather Dale, Luka Bloom, Emmylou Harris, the Narnia and Two Towers soundtracks, and a strange quantity of British Traditional fare (More Maddy Prior and Jim Moray than June Tabor and Kate Rusby -- their work is associated with the Serpent Prince), minor key harmonies and other odd group-singing particularly desirous.
Soundtrack for this project -- okay, okay, it's Bird of Dusk, and damn Finno for insisting on possessing my brain again: The Pogues, Boiled in Lead, Midnight Oil, the Levellers, Rush, Clannad (especially Sirius) Tom Waits, Julian Lennon, and Richard Thompson's "King of Bohemia". Queen and the Beatles would be in there if I owned any. Nightwish has added itself to the list since it's on the most relevant of my Pandora stations (which is actually called "Peter Gabriel"). Oysterband used to be on the list, but doesn't seem to be this draft around.
Crossovers: Stan Rogers, Sarah Slean, Peter Gabriel, Loreena McKennitt (though admittedly, Storm is more about her later work, and Bird more early.) I haven't tried Emmylou Harris, but I wonder.
