Structural concerns; nature of protagonist

[pegkerr]

Mulling over several things:

Inga's comments on the timeframe have made me realize that I have to consider whether I need to start again almost from scratch figuring out the plot structure of the novel.

I had thought: main action of book opens Memorial Day weekend with firm announcing they've won contest to design ice palace. Solveig and Jack meet, stuff with Aquatennial in July (summer magic climax), maybe the Little Guy is consulted, State Fair occurs (maybe Ingrid disappears here), ice palace is built in December, Winter Carnival/book climax in January, book ends at May Day Festival in May (Jack becomes Jack o' the Green). One year in review, boom.

But if work on the design doesn't even start until late summer, and they don't learn that they've won the contest until fall . . . well, that changes everything. Now the Aquatennial stuff and the State Fair stuff is entirely thrown into doubt.

I can approach this problem three different ways: 1) accept the info Inga has given me and work up a new plot event structure, lopping off all the summer magic stuff 2) reason that few people will come back to tap me on the shoulder to say, hey, it doesn't take so long to design an ice palace, so I stick to my original plan and ignore that it happened otherwise in real history, or 3) state that the ice palace was designed more quickly last time, but come up with a plausible excuse for stretching the process out this time. (Actually, there is a fourth option: crawl into a corner and dither a lot. I often resort to that one, which is why I've been blocked at novel writing for quite a while.)

I know I still want to tell the story of Solveig, an architect, designing an ice palace. She has a daughter named Ingrid, a mother named Agnes, her father died when she was a child, and it all has something to do with the fish. And there's this guy named Jack, and there's something about the ice palace that's magical, and there's something about choosing a heart of flesh. What the question boils down to here is, where does this book begin? That is not always so easy to tell. I don't have an answer on it, either. And perhaps I won't until I come up with those other elements that I think that I'm still missing . . . perhaps a fairy tale to give the book a spine, or an answer to the question, "What are the fish up to?"

Have also been thinking today about Solveig today, after reading this bit from the Terri Sutton article I mentioned earlier:

. . . What's most significant to me is that she [LeGuin] went back to her tale to worry one of the most cherished tropes of YA fantasy: the idea of a "chosen," fated hero. In a sense, all protagonists are chosen people, because the author has chosen to focus on them. But the concept of fated heroes, so often male in the past, has been troubling to me as an adult reader of fantasy. I'm not more special than anyone else. My actions do not resonate across the world(s). At the same time we always need heroes to jolt us into movement . . . What I find myself craving in YA fantasy is average protagonists, compelled by events to discover themselves capable of heroic acts--the Frodo Baggins type.

Now, this struck me quite strongly, and I think I might need to think about this a bit. I had been thinking that Solveig is the center of the action, because she got "saturated" with winter magic when she fell through the ice as a child, and she fell through because the fish were calling her. Why, though? Does she have to be chosen? What if she's just a normal woman, facing extraordinary magical challenges, and she has to solve them, not with a latent magical power that she suddenly discovers within herself, but by suddenly locating inner real resources, of nerve and steel and courage . . . by using her heart of flesh?

I used the latent magical talent tack in my first book. Perhaps . . . I should try the Frodo Baggins approach in this?

Eddi McCandry was chosen in War for the Oaks partly because she was a musician, which gave her a kind of magic, too. Is that the same thing? After all, she did spend a fair amount of the book grumbling "Why choose me?" (She was also chosen because she happened to be the ex-girlfriend of the guy who was chosen by the Unseelie Court.)

I remember how delighted I was with the central idea of the movie "Oh God." Not because I thought John Denver was such a good actor . . . but because I thought, when the movie was over and the lights went up, you know, why wouldn't God come to speak to someone as ordinary as the assistant manager of the produce department of a grocery store? And what would that very ordinary man discover about himself as he faces an extraordinary thing?

The Frodo Baggins story is tremendously moving to me. And yes, perhaps that is closer to the story I want to tell . . . the story of an ordinary person facing something strange and dangerous and perhaps wonderful, something never faced before and she pulls out something extraordinary in response.

On the other hand . . . maybe I'm just confused about what I want to do.

If you haven't noticed yet, I tend to dither a lot.

Peg

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

But it's lovely dithering, at least right now and as presented in these essays about noodling with structure and possibility.

I know you wanted to keep your circle of the year in there. I don't suppose starting at the end of one summer (Lammas, or Lughnasad, or whatever you want to call it; the beginning of August that I call First Harvest) and ending with the beginning of the next summer (with May Day, and "Summer is i-cumen in" and all that) would satisfy that desire. Not quite, anyhow. Or would it? Starting on the doorway out of one summer and ending up on the threshold of the next? If summer is Solveig's time, then she'd kind of come back around home to herself, or something. (Is summer her time? Does she have a time that's most home to her?)

The Frodo Baggins stuff makes very good sense. Big sense, even.

And hey, maybe the fish talk to anybody who happens by. Just not everybody listens.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

There could be reasons why it takes longer; strikes, someone sabotaging construction/design, a political reason why the designer is chosen so far in advance, some sort of natural disaster... Maybe the design and/or construction went horribly awry in a previous year. It's your world to play with. :)

[pameladean]

About choosing between the protagonist's having magical powers and the protagonist's finding "real" powers in a time of trial -- I'm always tripping up on this kind of thing when writing fantasy. Because there is a metaphorical level on which the magical powers ARE the real powers, are representative in a way necessary to the author or the character of interior things like strength or resolution or persistence. For whatever reason, just writing about strength or resolution or persistence does not highlight these qualities in the way that casting them as magical does. It depends on what metaphorical level you are on in the book. Remember when that fairy tale you disliked was transformed when you stopped thinking so literarlly about it, and wondered if the heroine weas being rewarded not for being a doormat but for, well, resolution and endurance?

I think Elise has a really good point when she says maybe the fish talk to everybody but not everybody listens. So you might be able to let Solveig have these magical powers, so you can express her interior strengths in the best way, but let her have, by herself and in herself, chosen to hear the fish as a child.

This kind of thing is really tricky. The literal level can overwhelm the metaphorical, or they can fail to support one another. (You can use them to deliberately undercut one another too, but that's a different thing.)

I'm rambling and had better stop.

Pamela

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think you should invent some plot device to explain why your timeline works in the book, toss it out in a sentence somewhere in the beginning, and be done with it. Or, that doesn't appeal, ignore reality.

B

[papersky.livejournal.com]

On the timing -- how about fifteen years ago they could do it in three months (or whatever it really was) now the politicing and the judging and the fuss takes so much longer -- only really, because it only took three months, the /magic thing/ didn't happen the other times, and actually the timing of this one has been arranged exactly so that it will. Whatever that magic winter climactic thing that needs an ice palace designed by Jack and Solveig is, and whoever could have manipulated that.

Incidentally, and this unfortunately won't work in Minneapolis, I made up an urban legend a while back that when the trees were cut down the Jack-in-the-greens went into the poles at intersection lights and became the green men who help people across the road when it's safe... I've always wanted to do something with that. But in Minneapolis they're white coloured, and hunchbacked like Richard III, so even if it did work in your world it's no use at all.

[(Anonymous)]

You can, quite realistically, have the competition be announced before Memorial day for the awarding of the design winner to be at the Aquatennial, then design work would start right away, structural can be required to be involved right away as well, due to past structural problems? Or, really, design your own time frame and just introduce some realistic details - I am sure, there wouldn't be five people out there, who would have known the actual timing!
Inga

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Create a reason the ice palace is chosen earlier? An anniversary? A dedication to a specific cause that needs the time to design/raise money? A palace to celebrate specific types of architecture links?