Time Crystal

Just thought I’d mention that I’m archiving the changes in TC every day, so if this story ever gets published and if the archiving has worked then I might have an interesting historical document that scholars might pore over (or pour coffee over more likely).

Now I’ve got Catty going into the tunnel in chapter 42 I need to work through how this affects chapter 45 in which, at the moment, Alex takes Maria back to the clinic. How do I do that? Well first, as usual, I use TextAloud to listen to it.
I’m also working on advice from Kesaira to tell less and show more, so I’m taking out statements like “Alex’s anger raged inside” and leave that for the reader to work out for herself from his behaviour.

Signed up for ICQ recently. Apparently my number is 414236432. I’m not really sure what happens next as I’ve never received or sent any messages that way. I guess somebody must know what it’s all about. It’s taking me a long time to catch up.

Not sure if I’m doing the right thing but I’ve decided to publish the map.
I use this to mark important places in the story.

Click here to see it.

So far it’s been private but I can’t really see why it should be.

Warning

I can’t guarantee that looking at this map will not spoil some later parts of the story. On the other hand, it might enhance them.

But at least it proves one thing: everything in this story is real, as far as I can make it, given the limitations that some parts of CERN (for example the Globe of Innovation) may not appear on Google’s map, and other parts (such as the ATLAS walkway) have not actually been built yet (although it appears on certain plans).

Now I’m converting the outline of the opening chapters of part 3 (the final part of volume 1) into text I got a horrible feeling that it is turgid and heavy. It feels like it lacks pace and drama.

Suddenly had the inspiration that if Catriona finds the tunnel around this point it might liven things up. But how can she? She’s promised George not to run away.
Earlier I had written a series of plotpoints where Catty went out onto the grass near the terrace outside the Cafeteria and finding a semi-wild cat. Originally they were inter-leaved with the strand showing Alex going into the Main Building for the first time. Catriona’s plot strand has some drama but not enough and I moved it into the Extracts section at the end of the novel. I tend not to delete things in case I want to use them later. Good job in this case because I now decided to use this as the intro for her going over to the tunnel.

This will now transform the whole shape of part 3. Yet how can she go back to ATLAS when she’s promised George she won’t run away? That’s the current plot problem. But it’s the sort of thing the author meets all the time. I want this to happen so what’s the reason? You can find reasons for anything if you look hard enough. It’s one of the skills of an author. My wife used to say to me “You can always justify yourself”.

As a footnote I might mention that there really is a white cat in CERN, or at least there was in 2006. I saw him in the south part of the main site, not far from Restaurant 2, at about 6am on the morning of 21st March, the day the story was originally going to be set.

The Point of View (POV) is one of the main things you need to decide about every scene. The POV is one of the characters and we see the scene through her eyes alone. If she cannot see something then the reader shouldn’t see it either, according to some authors. I don’t stick to this strict approach but do usually have a POV character.

I’m working on chapter 37 today, where the characters first enter the Main Building, and I’m changing the POV from Francisco to Maria. It’s an interesting exercise because it makes you rethink the whole scene, the events, the use of language. It might be worthwhile to re-assign the POV in every scene, as an exercise in improving writing.

I have the Geneva TV station Leman Bleu on line in the kitchen so I can watch it while cooking.
It’s usually a bit out of date but it gives me the atmosphere of Geneva.

Most authors seem to have some general idea of where they want their story to go, then start writing at the beginning and let their characters guide the story. That’s probably a good technique except for one thing: where do you start? Finding the right starting place took me months. I must have tried dozens of different starts, each one had it’s own scenario (general story situation).

On the other hand there are authors like me. Psychologically I don’t like not knowing where I’m going. I’m a control freak. I don’t like just wandering about in the hope of finding something good. I want to know the stuff is going to be good before I do a lot of work on it. I’ve spent too many years writing stuff and then throwing it away because it’s crap.

So now with TC I have a pretty clear idea of how the whole story works out, and I’m designing part 3 (last third of volume 1). I do it by using outline notes, like this:

Brigit: Ah, Catriona. Just the person I want to see.
Catriona tries to say something about Maria but Brigit won’t listen.
She starts screaming at Catriona for lack of respect.
Doctor asks Catriona where Maria is but George interrupts and joins in the argument.
George, Ludo and Sofie leave for Carrefour.

These lines come under a plotpoint heading.
In PowerWriter (could do the same in Word or any other editor that allows structured headings, although Word won’t cope with 100s of thousands of words) I structure the text with plotpoints which are gathered into chapters which in turn are gathered into parts. (These parts will eventually be published in volumes but PowerWriter only allows three levels of nesting. Not so powerful, but it works.)

I can then drag and drop these plotpoints, chapters etc to reorganise them. I do this often while I’m designing a part. I’ll try to outline a big chunk of work, putting ideas down rapidly without getting bogged down in detail. That’s the oppose of what most authors, who let their characters take them on a journey. In my case I’m the driver and the characters are on my bus. They act out their little dramas on the bus but I’m deciding where we’re going. They may make me take many detours but I still have a good idea where I want the bus to end up.

Once I’ve got enough plotpoints to write a chapter I might write it out, or I might go on (as I am now) and try to design another chapter. In fact I’m currently trying to design 20 chapters. I’m a bit torn about the right way to do this, about when to stop designing and start writing, because when you write you find that the story changes. The characters only really take over when you’re working with the actual text, and they do surprising things. This can change the story to a greater or lesser extent, and you can find that your designs for subsequent chapters no longer work.

So far I haven’t found the best time to switch from design to write. At present I’m stuck in design, perhaps because of my control freakery. But it seems to be working okay. Time (and the reader) will tell.