I like both of those scenes and it's good writing. Although I obviously haven't read the context I can kind of get where you're coming from with your little intro, about deleting them, I mean.
Perhaps you could incorporate those two scenes into an offbeat standalone spin-off?
Given my penchant for postmodernism, I have always been a big fan of deleted scenes, and including them as a kind of appendix or something. I even indexed my first poetry collection along the lines of what you might expect on a dvd, so it had the main menu (split into acts, called 'scene selection'), then it had some different versions, then it had a commentary (wot I wrote in a bit of a haze tbh), then some outtake tacked on to the end. I also did a weird fibonacci thing where I took each line of each poem that corresponded to the fibonacci series and made a new poem out of what came up. Then I did that again with the new poem. And then again, until on the fifth splice up I had a weird 5 line poem.
Ah - here it is:
I was seventeen,
The thoughts
She gave me dew
Different. It’s so simple, love.
Valleys and mountainous feelings, and
##
In my haze at the time I thought wow - that actually means something! And I didn't cheat in the slightest (bear in mind they'd given me Prozac at the time).
Anyway - I am totally in favour of doing outtakes and deleted scenes and meta-stuff like that - aside from anything else, I hate throwing things away. So I have a nice folder called 'fragments and deleted scenes'.
So I would definitely keep those scenes of yours and find something you can do with them. If you were to publish, it would be great for readers to have an extra section at the end with these deleted scenes. Also works for different versions of scenes of course. I think that's a very important, and a fun part of creativity...
Your comments are always a fun trip, Evie! Variety is indeed the spice of life, and Fibonacci is one of nature's favourite patterns.
I do also keep everything in my project folders, with whole scene deletions, general snippets and scene-specific snippets all filed away separately.
When getting more serious about serialisation, I've thought of providing extra value for dedicated readers through uncovering these deletions, or a commentary giving more context , or perhaps a foray into the deeper world-building aspects.
In wilder dreams of success, I've also imagined which of my minor characters' backstories might be amenable to some fanfic spin-off treatment.
I remembered another thing, which I forgot to say. This thing about looking from minor characters' point of view - I've heard this is a good writing exercise - like writing what they would think about what's going on in the narrative. So it makes them more real than simply having character notes.
There's a similar thing with acting and screenwriting. Like when I was at uni a friend of mine decided to direct The Crucible, and he got each of the actors to stand on a table, and then, in character, give their own opinion on everything that was happening in Salem. Ironically he was the one who introduced me to Tarantino and took me to see Reservoir Dogs at the cinema. Shortly after that he decided to direct a version of Twelve Angry Men in a kind of claustrophobic Tarantino style, in which the audience formed a kind of square around all the actors in the middle doing their thing, and it really worked.
Anyway, the other trick, from screenwriting, is to take your main character (it would equally work with minor ones/supporting cast) and put them in a really awkward situation (anxiety dream style), like put them in a restaurant about to pay and they realise they've lost their wallet and can't pay - so how do they react. Obviously there's a certain amount of lascivious schadenfreude towards your main character involved in this, but I can see how it works.
I have definitely found, after all, that I write much better characters and much better dialogue when I go all method acting and actually become that character, even though I'm (obviously) writing it, rather than acting it. Maybe in another life I would've been a good actress, but in this one, I'll have to settle for writer (and, erm, write about being an actress, lol).
That's a good writing exercise suggestion. I converse with my main characters, rather than be them - they've already suffered enough privacy invasions. And I'm a man.
Perhaps when authors write they're putting characters on a public stage - or in a wrestling match. The only advantage we have compared to the spectating readers is that the actors can only interact with us when they break their fourth wall.
I'm a huge fan of fourth wall breaking. Painting the damn bridge - no, thanks, but breaking the wall, defo.
I like your thing about privacy invasions, though - that made me chuckle because I'm a bit like that too, seeing as far as I'm concerned my so-called characters aren't characters they are real people. And in an infinite universe/multiverse, everything that can happen must happen somewhere/somewhen - so what we're doing with these stories is simply accessing those other worlds and then describing them. It's a bit like that theory that all the songs that have ever been written, or will be written, are just sitting there in some metaphysical archive and all that musicians and composers do is make a withdrawal type thing.
But yeah, privacy - Katrina will (she hopes) be getting a nice boyfriend soon enough and I am utterly loathe to describe any bedroom scenes. Aside from anything else, even if I didn't care about her I'd feel distinctly uncomfortable doing sex scenes. It's sort of embarrassing, because you get to thinking that the reader is judging you, rather than just reading it. I know, for example, that whatsername who wrote 50 shades admitted to doing 'research' with her husband before writing the damn thing. On the one paw I totally approve of research, and, ahem, I would certainly not be averse to a bit of the ol' kinky fuckery, but still, fanny marbles aside...
I can understand your approach of course - that's also a form of meditation, or what I think some people call 'light' trance, which is sort of the first level of dissociation I suppose. Same as when we visualise (and hear) our scenes.
I would probably say my kind of method acting, or getting into character, is a deeper level of dissociation/trance. It comes a lot easier to me because of learning how to dissociate out of necessity during my abusive childhood. It's obviously where MPD comes in. Rather than burble on about that here, though, I'll leave that to the lovely Katrina, seeing as in her next journal entry (this week hopefully) she will be burbling a little about the neuroscience research she's involved in and being stuck in an fMRI machine (yeah, it's freaky but it happens)...
I won't write a blog post to respond to your comment on my post or else I'll descend into recursive madness.
Suffice to say, I think you've hit *at least* a 1st level dissociation with your comment (or 3rd if we include 50SoG - even if the husband kept his clothes on for the fanfuc research).
Final fun fact: I last worked for a company which made MRI scanners (amongst many other things).' Quenching' is a good word to lookup in relation to the potential for their (mismanaged) operation Also: how helium balloons might indirectly cause patients to have poorer outcomes in the future.
'fanfuc research' - that made me guffaw. And then you follow that up with another related alliteration! Heaven knows what you and me would be like in the pub after a dozen drinks!
I looked up quenching, as I wasn't envisaging subjecting our Katrina to anything like that. Especially with a description like this: "Although gaseous helium is lighter than air and will float to the top of the room, large quantities can completely displace oxygen from the entire room and if inhaled may cause loss of consciousness within 10 seconds with the possibility of asphyxia and death. Patients and staff must therefore be evacuated immediately from the scanner room if a quench occurs."
I like both of those scenes and it's good writing. Although I obviously haven't read the context I can kind of get where you're coming from with your little intro, about deleting them, I mean.
Perhaps you could incorporate those two scenes into an offbeat standalone spin-off?
Given my penchant for postmodernism, I have always been a big fan of deleted scenes, and including them as a kind of appendix or something. I even indexed my first poetry collection along the lines of what you might expect on a dvd, so it had the main menu (split into acts, called 'scene selection'), then it had some different versions, then it had a commentary (wot I wrote in a bit of a haze tbh), then some outtake tacked on to the end. I also did a weird fibonacci thing where I took each line of each poem that corresponded to the fibonacci series and made a new poem out of what came up. Then I did that again with the new poem. And then again, until on the fifth splice up I had a weird 5 line poem.
Ah - here it is:
I was seventeen,
The thoughts
She gave me dew
Different. It’s so simple, love.
Valleys and mountainous feelings, and
##
In my haze at the time I thought wow - that actually means something! And I didn't cheat in the slightest (bear in mind they'd given me Prozac at the time).
Anyway - I am totally in favour of doing outtakes and deleted scenes and meta-stuff like that - aside from anything else, I hate throwing things away. So I have a nice folder called 'fragments and deleted scenes'.
So I would definitely keep those scenes of yours and find something you can do with them. If you were to publish, it would be great for readers to have an extra section at the end with these deleted scenes. Also works for different versions of scenes of course. I think that's a very important, and a fun part of creativity...
Your comments are always a fun trip, Evie! Variety is indeed the spice of life, and Fibonacci is one of nature's favourite patterns.
I do also keep everything in my project folders, with whole scene deletions, general snippets and scene-specific snippets all filed away separately.
When getting more serious about serialisation, I've thought of providing extra value for dedicated readers through uncovering these deletions, or a commentary giving more context , or perhaps a foray into the deeper world-building aspects.
In wilder dreams of success, I've also imagined which of my minor characters' backstories might be amenable to some fanfic spin-off treatment.
I remembered another thing, which I forgot to say. This thing about looking from minor characters' point of view - I've heard this is a good writing exercise - like writing what they would think about what's going on in the narrative. So it makes them more real than simply having character notes.
There's a similar thing with acting and screenwriting. Like when I was at uni a friend of mine decided to direct The Crucible, and he got each of the actors to stand on a table, and then, in character, give their own opinion on everything that was happening in Salem. Ironically he was the one who introduced me to Tarantino and took me to see Reservoir Dogs at the cinema. Shortly after that he decided to direct a version of Twelve Angry Men in a kind of claustrophobic Tarantino style, in which the audience formed a kind of square around all the actors in the middle doing their thing, and it really worked.
Anyway, the other trick, from screenwriting, is to take your main character (it would equally work with minor ones/supporting cast) and put them in a really awkward situation (anxiety dream style), like put them in a restaurant about to pay and they realise they've lost their wallet and can't pay - so how do they react. Obviously there's a certain amount of lascivious schadenfreude towards your main character involved in this, but I can see how it works.
I have definitely found, after all, that I write much better characters and much better dialogue when I go all method acting and actually become that character, even though I'm (obviously) writing it, rather than acting it. Maybe in another life I would've been a good actress, but in this one, I'll have to settle for writer (and, erm, write about being an actress, lol).
That's a good writing exercise suggestion. I converse with my main characters, rather than be them - they've already suffered enough privacy invasions. And I'm a man.
Perhaps when authors write they're putting characters on a public stage - or in a wrestling match. The only advantage we have compared to the spectating readers is that the actors can only interact with us when they break their fourth wall.
I'm a huge fan of fourth wall breaking. Painting the damn bridge - no, thanks, but breaking the wall, defo.
I like your thing about privacy invasions, though - that made me chuckle because I'm a bit like that too, seeing as far as I'm concerned my so-called characters aren't characters they are real people. And in an infinite universe/multiverse, everything that can happen must happen somewhere/somewhen - so what we're doing with these stories is simply accessing those other worlds and then describing them. It's a bit like that theory that all the songs that have ever been written, or will be written, are just sitting there in some metaphysical archive and all that musicians and composers do is make a withdrawal type thing.
But yeah, privacy - Katrina will (she hopes) be getting a nice boyfriend soon enough and I am utterly loathe to describe any bedroom scenes. Aside from anything else, even if I didn't care about her I'd feel distinctly uncomfortable doing sex scenes. It's sort of embarrassing, because you get to thinking that the reader is judging you, rather than just reading it. I know, for example, that whatsername who wrote 50 shades admitted to doing 'research' with her husband before writing the damn thing. On the one paw I totally approve of research, and, ahem, I would certainly not be averse to a bit of the ol' kinky fuckery, but still, fanny marbles aside...
I can understand your approach of course - that's also a form of meditation, or what I think some people call 'light' trance, which is sort of the first level of dissociation I suppose. Same as when we visualise (and hear) our scenes.
I would probably say my kind of method acting, or getting into character, is a deeper level of dissociation/trance. It comes a lot easier to me because of learning how to dissociate out of necessity during my abusive childhood. It's obviously where MPD comes in. Rather than burble on about that here, though, I'll leave that to the lovely Katrina, seeing as in her next journal entry (this week hopefully) she will be burbling a little about the neuroscience research she's involved in and being stuck in an fMRI machine (yeah, it's freaky but it happens)...
I won't write a blog post to respond to your comment on my post or else I'll descend into recursive madness.
Suffice to say, I think you've hit *at least* a 1st level dissociation with your comment (or 3rd if we include 50SoG - even if the husband kept his clothes on for the fanfuc research).
Final fun fact: I last worked for a company which made MRI scanners (amongst many other things).' Quenching' is a good word to lookup in relation to the potential for their (mismanaged) operation Also: how helium balloons might indirectly cause patients to have poorer outcomes in the future.
Ah - no! I've got it! A scene in which our Katrina is confronted by bad guys in the fMRI chamber and she does the quenching thing against them!
Yes! I knew there was something I was missing there! Take that, Bond. you cad.
'fanfuc research' - that made me guffaw. And then you follow that up with another related alliteration! Heaven knows what you and me would be like in the pub after a dozen drinks!
I looked up quenching, as I wasn't envisaging subjecting our Katrina to anything like that. Especially with a description like this: "Although gaseous helium is lighter than air and will float to the top of the room, large quantities can completely displace oxygen from the entire room and if inhaled may cause loss of consciousness within 10 seconds with the possibility of asphyxia and death. Patients and staff must therefore be evacuated immediately from the scanner room if a quench occurs."
Now, if we combine this with one of my all time favourite fMRI experiment papers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5675825/ then the possibilities for bawdy farce are almost limitless.
You should definitely give some of that article a read, as it's utterly fascinating (see especially figure 5, and the 'head immobilisation' section).
Anyhow, there is so definitely a story in there somewhere.
I'm totally with you on all this. Rather than call it pretentious, I call it postmodernism.