Well I’m finally into it again, turning my back on the reality that I can’t manage to control anyway. And in this story project, I truly mean that it must be controlled. Back to Powerpoint planning, back to forking paths and time sequencing. Back to mapping and structure and while I still may not know where I’m heading, at least I’ll know where I’ve already been and need to return. Thank God, and Steve, John and Bill for the all too brief taste of New Media last year.
Something I’ve learned from 100 Years of Solitude that will help me in this is Marquez’s elegant management of time. His foreshadowing–blatantly telling us of someone’s death before he’s even developed their character–is a wonder of narrative skill. Is he giving something away? Of course not; a character, just as you and I, will die. Not always before the end of the novel, but if you believe in the character, then you must accept his eventual fate. Scarlett O’Hara dies. Peter Rabbit dies. They all do–that’s the unwritten realism in fiction.
So I shall learn word weaving, and time travel, and how to use the software I need to make it all work.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology