Original Vision
In some cases, your original material can be a lot more valuable than the stuff you come up with during the editing process. As of right now, I haven’t touched any of the finished chapters of Hellion because I feel, no matter how bad some of it may be, it would really help to get the book done before I worry about those things. And there are quite a few bits that need work. Nothing’s “so bad that I can’t stand to look at it,” but there are some areas that just don’t do it the way I want it too. Oh well, that’s a lot better than how Salamander went. By this point in the writing of the latter, I had so many scenes that I just wanted to die that it wasn’t even funny. That doesn’t mean some of the scenes didn’t have gems in it–I just wasn’t a good enough writer then to separate those gems from the stuff that was pure crud.
Lately, I’ve been considering going back and doing some character touch-ups. It’s difficult when your characters are ever-changing as you write–or ever-growing, depending on how you look at it. I don’t expect to have my characters nailed down in the first draft, but I’d like to feel as if I have a *sense* of who they are as I write. Characters do change throughout a story, especially a story like Hellion in which so much of it is based on discovery, macro-cosmic, self or otherwise. I feel it’d be a lot better to have that part of the story down more than anything, rather than have to invent it all as I edit. I’m far enough into the book now to know what my characters are heading towards. In short, I have all the story worked, out just not the details. So it’d be nice, when I do reach the ending, to have enough of those themes saturated that I don’t have to destroy my soul trying to bring them out in-edit.
I’ve wandered miles from the original point of this post.
I’m realizing that a lot of the material I’m working with is reworked versions of stuff I actually came up with for Hellion back in 2004. It surprises me how closely the story mirrors what I worked out, especially for Danielle’s character (Lionel is a whole different story). It reinforces my belief that this is something that’s matured with me over the past few years and that it was something I was eventually meant to write. More importantly, I’ve been reconsidering the title Aura as the title for the first book, which actually stemmed from a conversation I had with my father back in the autumn of 2004 over sushi. Danielle’s character was actually inspired by a story he told me about a woman who spent most of her young life attaching colors and visual essence to things she saw, and thought it was something that everyone did. This eventually blossomed into Danielle, who I added to the original Hellion almost as an afterthought (I’d originally wanted to write a story just about her). That’s more or less how this version began–which I think is how it was meant to be. Thus, the original vision of the story won over.
What killed the original version of Hellion for me was how I virtually edited the concept to death after I’d finished two drafts. I think it’s important when writing, and even more when editing, to keep the original idea of the story intact and to add things that will flavor the concept, and take things away that either don’t add to it or sour the ultimate taste you’re trying to create. It’s really impossible to change the direction of a story mid-way through, or so I discovered.
As for how the writing’s going…
Slow. I’m realizing that I have a very specific method of working on stories. It usually begins with the initial idea or image, which will last me 20-30 pages, or however long it takes me to get a sense for the budding essence of the book. Then, I get a plotline in mind that will lead up to the discovery or ignition of the overall plot, then I write that. Somewhere in there then, I get lost and disillusioned, and wander aimlessly for weeks or months trying to figure out just what I’m writing, get an idea, outline like mad, and write, changing things as I go, until I reach the end. That’s how it went for the original Hellion, Shadower and Salamander books. To be honest, I think thats a flow I need to go with. So, I’m working through that.
Other than that, the book is going very well.