Got another chapter done this weekend, and received my critiques on chapters 21-22. I hoping to get through a little more tonight, but I'm not feeling super well, so an early bedtime might be called for!
I'm sorry I didn't get a post up last week, I had some 4th of July commitments, and I decided to have some fun instead of getting to my blog post. And it was definitely worth it! I wasn't sure what to write about this week, I felt distracted by the bit of my novel I'm working on now. I've been waiting for about 8 months to really get into the end! I want it to be so many things, and I've imagined so much for it, that I'm afraid it will be a let-down for me to actually write it. We shall see! I just have to keep at it, and not let that worry stop me from writing. Anyway, so I couldn't think of what to write. And then I watched an old episode of X-men (which just recently became available instantly on Netflix). And then I watched X2, which is my absolute favorite of the X-Men movies (even the part where Wolverine gets pwnd by a normal bullet through his adamantium skull. Really, Bryan Singer??) I don't think most people know how much of a nerd I am. Not that I really hide it, just that most people don't get the incredibly obscure references I come up with. Or the conversation never gets into areas that I shine in, because let's face it, how many people really want to talk about the things that I think about? My brain is a strange place. I love superheroes, whether absurdly costumed cartoons like the old shows, dark, gritty stories like Union Dues by Jeffrey DeRego, or the sarcastic yet touching How to Succeed In Evil by Patrick McLean. A lot of the anime I like follows the tropes of the superhero genre. I can laugh off a lot of the corn or poor dialogue because there is an intriguing kernel at the heart of the story that I love. There is a quality in this stuff that I want my work to have. Of course I want to avoid the dumb things (besides, if you try to follow film or TV too closely in your writing, you end up with major problems). But there is a grand scope to the conflict, a tendency for history to catch up. The characters have mystery and depth, foibles as great or greater than any uncanny strength they might have. No matter how big and overwhelming the conflict, the good stories are always the ones where the real problem is personal. So as I come to the end of King's Mark, I've got some amazing stuff to strive towards. I have to keep in mind that through the greater conflict, the really powerful moments have to come from the characters themselves.