{"id":38285,"date":"2020-08-27T06:30:55","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T18:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=38285"},"modified":"2020-09-16T20:28:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T08:28:07","slug":"inside-the-writing-life-a-game-of-two-halves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2020\/08\/27\/inside-the-writing-life-a-game-of-two-halves\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside The Writing Life: ‘A Game Of Two Halves’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sometimes you have to look both ways…. (via Wikipedia: Statue representing Janus Bifrons in the Vatican Museum)<\/p><\/div>\n

A month ago, I talked about completing a plot milestone<\/a> in the writing of WALL#4 and a little bit about that process, including moving on to the ‘next’ chapter or section.<\/p>\n

Those of you who are The Wall Of Night<\/a> series’ readers will be aware that I tell the story in sections. When it comes to that process in writing terms, I have to paraphrase a NZ All Black (the national rugby team) captain (Sean Fitzpatrick) who famously referred to “a game of two halves.”<\/p>\n

(The quote went something like “it was a game of two halves but rugby was the winner on the night” — and if I were a sports or rugby blogger, the quote and its context would be pretty much a post in itself…)<\/p>\n

Coming back to writing, constructing the story in sections is also very much a “game of two halves.” The first and larger half is simply getting the thrust of the story in the section right, usually ticking off one or more significant plot and\/or character development points along the way—duly noting that most of the time it’s not really possible to completely separate out the two. AKA: what happens in the plot affects character development, and the way characters develop affects what they do, which in turn shapes the plot…<\/p>\n

The second half often appears smaller, but can be deceptive in that respect. Once the main thrust of the section is accomplished, as author I must then begin thinking about the next section — but in between the two is the transition, which usually occurs toward the end of the section-in-progress, although it may sometimes carry over into the opening sequence of the subsequent section.<\/p>\n

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An example of this would be Part II, The Northern March in The Gathering Of The Lost<\/em><\/a> (WALL #2.) The section comprises seventeen chapters, of which the final two are “transitional”, i.e. they wrap up the action of Part II and set up the action to come in Part IV, Midsummer (and also, to an extent, in WALL #3, Daughter of Blood<\/em><\/a> — just saying.)<\/p>\n

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By way of clarification, Part III is an “interlude” (albeit an important one for the series) to the main GATHERING arc, which is why the transition is to Part IV. And the first chapter of PART IV completes the transition by having the main character (Malian) reflect again on what has happened in Part II, but only in passing because already the action is moving swiftly on.<\/p>\n

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When it comes to the “game of two halves”, though, and harking back to last month’s post, sometimes the transitions can be really tricky to write, chiefly because they must achieve two goals: reflecting and making sense (to a degree at least) of the preceding action, which is by its nature a slower-paced exercise, while simultaneously moving the story (along) into its next phase. One of the risks of the reflection phase is avoiding falling into what the great Ursula Le Guin called “expository lumps” — and one of the challenges of the transition is to achieve both its objectives without one overwhelming the other. In short, it *should* be seamless for the reader.<\/p>\n

So guess what I’ve been working on in the past month? Yep, you guessed it—the transitional phase at the end of a major section. It has been proverbially “tricksy”, too (to quote Gollum when speaking of hobbits.) I’m quite pleased with the way its worked out, overall—although there’s still a “how to” that I have to resolve in terms of what I now know is coming up. But I already have a couple of “inklings” regarding possible mechanics and am confident, on past experience, that the “how” will fall into place as I write on.<\/p>\n

Speaking of “writing on”, I’ll leave you now to go and do just that. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month ago, I talked about completing a plot milestone in the writing of WALL#4 and a little bit about that process, including moving on to the ‘next’ chapter or section. Those of you who are The Wall Of Night series’ readers will be aware that I tell the story in sections. When it comes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-what-im-doing","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38285"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38434,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38285\/revisions\/38434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}