Oh boy, writing about writing.
Writing about MY writing.
Writing about MY writing ideas…
Let’s go for it?
When I speak about voice, I’m speaking about two things. The first is the narrator’s voice, and the second is the character’s voice. During many rounds of editing, keeping honest to both is essential, and finding ways to appropriately adjust text to circumstances affecting both is likewise important. “Seasons,” the chapter in question, managed to struggle with both voices as long as it stayed in. This conflict is what led to its eventual removal.
I’ll talk first to character voice, even though it’s the second one I mentioned above because consistency is an illusion and time isn’t real anymore. Hako, (Hatekpa but we’ll be informal) at this point in the story, is not a main character. She’s been, admittedly unfairly, sidelined by her forceful, domineering husband, Zhaekota. I like her, through the other books she wound up becoming one of my favorite characters to write and edit, but not as much here. The original idea of this chapter is to reveal more of the life of this politician’s wife, and how she and Zhaekota have wound up not only together, but together in their current situation. I wanted to explore Hako more, and give her some depth beyond the background support she offers Zhaekota. There is a depth to her that, in the future, I will be able to explore, but this wasn’t the place for it. Certainly not in a situation void of agency, and not in the style presented. So as much as I enjoy the content of this chapter, and still consider most of the events in it as being canon when writing her in the future, (what a healthy relationship, right?) the sudden shift in perspective still felt jarring to myself and early readers.
In short, it wasn’t time for her debut yet.
As the other books in the series have been written, and as the second undergoes its first major round of betas and edits, I look back at my old outlines and notes and am amazed at how much has changed. There are characters meant to have become main antagonists who have either died or, in one weird instance, entirely switched sides. One character, set to die, has instead gone on far farther than I ever thought they would. Hako was not meant to be more than a side character, but has found herself in a unique narrative position as the story progressed. She deserved a proper introduction, and this chapter was a horrifically flawed debut that needed either major revision or absolute destruction. I destroyed it, and started anew, because I was annoyed also at the change in style of the narrator’s voice.
That style being unconscious flashbacks.
These, I suppose, are not in and of themselves a bad thing, but there are three main things holding the voice and the story back here. The first is their use elsewhere in A Place I Have Never Been. There are flashbacks in the story, most notably in Eilatek’s occasional breaks from reality, but not an entire chapter composed of them before and not multiple set to tell a story like this. Eilatek’s are also incorporated into what’s already happening, instead of being where the story itself takes place. Having the chapter be (almost) entirely flashback creates another problem
It’s basically one giant exposition dump at a time where that exposition is super not needed. At the point in the story where this chapter was supposed to go, the action is supposed to be rising. Things are happening, work is progressing, and suddenly we’re going to take a random chill moment to look at the relationship between a currently main character and a currently side character through flashbacks that, one after another, serve only to exposit and exposit poorly? No… but thanks?
All the information presented here in a kind of direct-telling kind of storytelling can (and hopefully will be) presented better as Hako’s character debuts and develops. Her past in dealing with the takeover of her family’s company, meeting Zhaekota and the complicated development of their relationship, and the difficulty inherent in where they are now can all be examined through character interactions and can be (say (or write) it with me) SHOWN.
I feel like the whole ‘show vs tell’ thing is not something I should have to explain? Only wish I were better at it. That’s why we keep writing, right?
So, there we have it. A character who I wound up liking more than I thought I would and who hadn’t found her voice yet given a better chance at debuting in lieu of an exposition-filled, tonally-off, voiceless, flashback-filled chapter.
That’s a recipe for a chapter getting cut! (Nor was she the only one who lost chapters because of changes in perspective or importance, believe me.)
Where that character goes from there is anyone’s guess, (even mine, apparently.)