Nobody Withstands the Machine

WESTLEY [Strapped to a table]: Where am I?

THE ALBINO [In raspy voice]: The Pit of Despair. Don’t even think [he coughs, gags, clears his throat; speaks normally] Don’t even think about trying to escape. The chains are far too thick. And don’t dream of being rescued, either. The only way in is secret, and only the Prince, the County, and I know how to get in and out.

WESTLEY: Then I’m here ‘til I die?

THE ALBINO: ‘Til they kill you, yeah.

WESTLEY [Noting the Albino washing his shoulder wound]: Then why bother curing me?

THE ALBINO: The Prince and the Count always insist on everyone being healthy before they’re broken.

WESTLEY: So there’s to be torture? [The Albino nods] I can cope with torture [The Albino shakes his head vigorously] You don’t believe me?

THE ALBINO: You survived the Fire Swamp, so you must be very brave. But nobody withstands The Machine.

The Machine. Though the concept of the suction pump is centuries old, as Count Rugen says, I can feel it sucking my life away. And though that’s a bit dramatic, it is kinda how I feel editing Doleful Creatures. But I’ve got to get there. I’ll get out of the Pit of Despair, albino or no albino. I’ll find that wheelbarrow. I’ll find that holocaust cloak. And I may have to find my own Fezzik and Inigo. But find them I will.

Because the story is there. It wants to come out. It’s salvageable, though I’ve got to wash a lot of krep off it.

Finding Inigo and Fezzik will be essential. I can see the story, I can hear it struggling in the krep, but I’m having a hard time extracting it.

But I know I can do this. I’m promised in my partrirchal blessing if I put my mind to it, I can accomplish difficult things, and will see the fruits of my labor come forward. That gives me hope.

Lemme Explain. No, there is too Much. Lemme Sum Up.

As I continue (still!) to work on Doleful Creatures, my object in this revision is to do the opposite of what Inigo Montoya says.

I’ve got to explain. I can’t sum up. Or if I sum up, I have to make sure the summation is shorthand for something I’ve already explained.

I’ve got a representation of God in my story, but he’s called He Who Marks the Sparrow’s Fall. There is, obviously, some reverence attached to him by one of my characters. But I get to the reverence part, and I see there’s no explanation. Or at least one the reader will understand.

I have to remember that readers can’t read between the lines. They can only read what’s on the page. That won’t stop them necessarily from making inferences, but if I want them to go in a certain direction, I can’t lead them there on inference alone.

This reminds me of a few things:

1. Always put your work away and look at it again with a cold eye.
2. Levels of edit matter.
3. One of my USU professors said something like this recently: Teachers sometimes screw up explanations to their students because the teachers rely too much on the shorthand of their own experience to answer the student’s question. If the student asks their peers the same question, they have levels of experience that are similar enough they often can connect with the right answer because they’re closer seeing eye to eye.

This is why I continue to resist the rush to self-publish Doleful Creatures yet. It is just not ready. But I’m getting it closer.

Back to Inigo: His summation works not only because it’s humorous, but because the reader/viewer has already seen in longhand what he’s summing up. It works to get Wesley up to speed – he may indeed have questions – but it also works to keep the readers up to speed because they’ve already seen these events unspool. The reminder works where it needs to. Had it come any earlier in the story, it would NOT have worked. But I’ve known for a long time that William Goldman is an excellent writer, who knows this stuff already. I hope he learned it by trial and error, as I am. He could conceivably be a genius, I will grant. I’m not, so I have to keep plugging away. Not that I mind. Because I’m learning a lot.

I Hate Waiting

I was fortunate last week to find about half a dozen people willing to beta read the first 25 chapters of Doleful Creatures.

But now I have to wait.

And I hate waiting.

What I should be doing is to continue Revision 15. After all, I’ve got the first 25 chapters re-worked, but there’s some serious work to do to get the rest of the book caught up with the revisions. I have eliminated one plot point that’s been there from the start – meaning aside from characters, this book is NOT what it originally set out to be. Which is what you have to expect with a first novel, especially written by a person who favors starting out and seeing where the story ends up, rather than outlining it from the start. So I have to go through the rest of the book and kill the rest of that plot – not that I’ll be difficult; just the revision of one chapter (revealing how little this certain plot point added to the story, really).

But then there are new plot points I’ve introduced that I have to tie up in the last portion of the book, points meant to give my main characters – Aloysius the badger and Jarrod the magpie – a little hope at the end. No deus ex machina hope, but perhaps a little bit of relief from the pain they’ve had to suffer.

Then there’s the feedback from these beta readers to consider. I’m convinced at least one of them is going to provide some pretty powerful feedback that’ll either help me make this a great book or shatter my spirit to the point I reconsider my lifetime priorities. I don’t know what to expect from the others. I hope they’re all mean, because it is as I told them: I want this to be a good book, not one that gets me a pat on the head.

I also need to make a list of important place names because I want to draw a map that goes with the story. Why? Because I am a big nerd.