What's the stake?

Identify the primary value at stake in a story.

It's a good phrase, but does it mean anything?

The protagonist usually represents the positive side of this value and the antagonist the negative side.

Now, can one have a heroine who is both protagonist and antagonist? Would that make life interesting? I think it happens often enough in real life. When there is a problem, then the heroine struggles to solve the problem. In my current work, honesty is at stake. If a successful outcome means she must lie, or do something dishonest, then the two sides of her nature will argue with each other - or against each other - in the story.

How successful will it be for the readers?

I suppose that will depend on how good the exposition is - facts, info about  the character that is necessary for the reader to understand her motivation, for her story and desperation to be understood. The skill is to make it invisible and usually  the dreaded words Show dont Tell creep in at this point. The author should dramatize the exposition if possible. Look at it this way - the charachter knows their world, their history and themselves  - or we hope they do.  Let them use what they know  to get what they want. Think of self-knowledge as a gun and let them shoot it out. Reveal your character slowly; let unimportant facts come first, the most critical facts last.

Revision Fatigue

Durham Market Square

In spite of the rain clouds and the dull, windy sky, I'm feeling pleased with life. That's because I have finished - hurrah! - what is probably the fifth edit of  my first Matho story.  I haven't been counting the edits, but this one feels like I'm really getting the hang of revising a story.
I was pretty chuffed with the first draft, but that was probably four years ago. I made the big mistake and sent partial submissions out, and of course got rejections. About six months later, I had another look at the story, wondering why it didn't have agents queuing up at my door. That's when I saw all the niggling little repetitions and awkwardnesses, even the occasional plot problem.

A year on, and I went through it again, and found still more to change. Does this process never end, I wondered? Will I be doing this ten years from now? Then I read a piece about revising and though I can't remember who said it, I jotted down the four things that really count: Conflict, Suspense, Drama and Emotional Intensity. One or the other of these should appear on every page.

The full meaning of the phrase Revision Fatigue hit me. The story was as good as I could make it and I didn't want to go through the damned thing again....but I knew I needed to do it. Nobody warns you about this process. Some authors blog about doing their umpteenth edit, but like every other newish writer, I must have glossed over it. I certainly didn't properly take it in.

But you know what? This time around, I gave myself permission to be ruthless. I chopped boring bits (yes, there were some) re-drafted sentences so they were less clunky, upped the intensity every which way I could think of and even subjected poor old Matho to be a bit of torture along the way. Punctuation and missed words (yes, there were still some of those, too) chapter endings and beginnings - all were given the old critical eye. I re-wrote two chapters from a different POV because I thought it gave the whole more intensity. The last chapter was finally finished off properly. I think I'd got so tired at the end of writing 110,000 words that it had always got short shrift. Now it is done, and I can can go off and have a jolly day out. Yeah!

Downton and dumbing down

Downton Abbey’s airtime is to be cut from eight to six hours when it goes out Stateside next week amid fears it will be too complex for American viewers.

It is thought “there might be too many references to the entail and they have been cut. It is not a concept people in the US are very familiar with.”
Well, I have to say I’m not familiar with an entail either. Why would I be? My family even at its most extended and affluent has never had cause to think of such a thing, and I think that goes for most of the British population.

“American audiences are used to a different speed when it comes to television drama and you need to get into a story very quickly.” Not only in their tv, darling, but in their books, too. Miss out the detail, go for the action seems to be the cry.

“Matthew Crawley (played by Dan Stevens) – a middle-class third cousin of Lord Grantham (played by Hugh Bonneville) who becomes the unlikely heir to the family’s estate – will also arrive earlier than he did in the UK version to increase the show’s “drama and conflict." He is a pivotal character and his arrival brings with it drama and conflict. In the British version he doesn’t arrive until episode two. In our version he is there in episode one.”

The eight hour running time has been cut to six for the US, but there is hope for those who would like to see the whole story – the DVD boxed set will be the eight hour version.

Perhaps this goes someway to pinpointing the differences in UK-US film/tv culture. Most of the film stuff that comes out of the US these days makes me think of the cartoon characters in the comics we used to read as children. Angelina Jolie in Salt, for one – the action sequences should have killed her off in the first reel but no, up she bounces, dives off a motorway bridge and ricochets off yet another moving juggernaut on the lane below. I gave up counting how many times she ought to have died and thought of her as an indiarubber doll rather than a human being.

This is a bit of a rant for the New Year! Maybe I'll save books for the next post.