Pruitt Update
A number of you have expressed interest in the progress of my book. I admit that withholding updates for long stretches of time is a terrible way to nurture a budding fan base, so here's where the project stands:
I have continued, in my own haphazard way, to populate the world of Richard Pruitt with characters, places, and scenes, though I have yet to string everything together. You will be interested to know that Richard's acquaintances include the likes of Russell Delaney, Gianna Sforza, Kyle Larrabee, and the Jackal; and organizations such as the Pratum Terra Company, Ehrlichmann Spritzer, and August, Zupec and Associates. I have descriptions on paper and in my mind of every minute detail of the settings for the book, right down to the coloration of the bricks on Rich's townhouse.
Where, then, is the final product? I wonder that myself sometimes. Large embryonic tracts of the story float in and out of my mind at random (sometimes inconvenient) moments. I can close my eyes and see the movie version of the story in my head whenever I feel like it, but sometimes when I sit down to type, the words don't flow nearly as well as they should. This has been a frustrating process at times, but I'm being patient and allowing the story unfold at its own pace. As for those times when I am able to sit down quietly and start the ideas flowing, I'm averaging between two to four finished pages per hour. Slowly but surely, here comes Pruitt.
For the last year or so, I've envisioned this story unfolding in linear fashion, focusing on the last day of this guy's life. Then I began to wonder, "Why confine the story to a single day? What's the use of making everything happen in such a hurry? Life happens gradually, so why invent a cluster fuck?" Then I started thinking about alternate ways to formulate the story, and I wound up changing the sotry structure rather drastically.
Remember a few months ago, how I posted an analogy between writing a story and tossing stones into a river? The basic idea is: You're throwing stones somewhere out into this river that's flowing in front of you. You know that you will be crossing the river, but you can't be exactly certain of what the structure you'll be walking on looks like. I decided that an adaptation of this concept could work for this story, so I adjusted my mindset towards establishing the flow in order to fit the bridge of stones analogy.
Then I put that idea to the side for a couple months and began to search for names. I honestly believe that great characters can flow from great names. I selected a few names based on personality and characterization traits, but more are taken from random places, like newspaper stories and street names, and some names pay homage to obscure historical figures. This story is full of little inside jokes that only I will probably ever get. Those of you who know me well know that the annotated version of this story might be even more interesting than the story itself. For example, I needed a female character to find herself under attack, sacrifice a prized possession in defense of the attack, and ultimately lose the battle anyway. I sat down and thought about this for a while, tried to think of a time and a place where that occurred, and it suddenly struck me: Milan. I did a little research and came up with an appropriate name, at which point her personality burst forth like a firecracker.
The other day, as I was looking over my list of character sketches, it struck me that these people could be the stones in the hypothetical bridge. So, I decided to set the characters' names as the chapter titles. As the story jumps from one character to another, the reader will see the growth and development of Rich's character. Also, another trick I decided to employ as best I can: The chapters become progressively shorter as the story moves along. Rich will have less and less time to react to situations which involve increasingly larger stakes. This technique should speed up the pace of the story, and ultimately (hopefully) create a resounding climax at the conclusion of the story.
I would like to remind you that, despite my delinquent tendencies and juvenile sense of humor, this story is not a comic endeavor. As in daily life, you will find a number of humorously dumbfounding moments, but this is mostly a serious morality tale, possibly even a cautionary one if I ultimately choose to steer it in that direction.
I like this project the more I work on it, which is probably why I haven't finished it yet.
I have continued, in my own haphazard way, to populate the world of Richard Pruitt with characters, places, and scenes, though I have yet to string everything together. You will be interested to know that Richard's acquaintances include the likes of Russell Delaney, Gianna Sforza, Kyle Larrabee, and the Jackal; and organizations such as the Pratum Terra Company, Ehrlichmann Spritzer, and August, Zupec and Associates. I have descriptions on paper and in my mind of every minute detail of the settings for the book, right down to the coloration of the bricks on Rich's townhouse.
Where, then, is the final product? I wonder that myself sometimes. Large embryonic tracts of the story float in and out of my mind at random (sometimes inconvenient) moments. I can close my eyes and see the movie version of the story in my head whenever I feel like it, but sometimes when I sit down to type, the words don't flow nearly as well as they should. This has been a frustrating process at times, but I'm being patient and allowing the story unfold at its own pace. As for those times when I am able to sit down quietly and start the ideas flowing, I'm averaging between two to four finished pages per hour. Slowly but surely, here comes Pruitt.
For the last year or so, I've envisioned this story unfolding in linear fashion, focusing on the last day of this guy's life. Then I began to wonder, "Why confine the story to a single day? What's the use of making everything happen in such a hurry? Life happens gradually, so why invent a cluster fuck?" Then I started thinking about alternate ways to formulate the story, and I wound up changing the sotry structure rather drastically.
Remember a few months ago, how I posted an analogy between writing a story and tossing stones into a river? The basic idea is: You're throwing stones somewhere out into this river that's flowing in front of you. You know that you will be crossing the river, but you can't be exactly certain of what the structure you'll be walking on looks like. I decided that an adaptation of this concept could work for this story, so I adjusted my mindset towards establishing the flow in order to fit the bridge of stones analogy.
Then I put that idea to the side for a couple months and began to search for names. I honestly believe that great characters can flow from great names. I selected a few names based on personality and characterization traits, but more are taken from random places, like newspaper stories and street names, and some names pay homage to obscure historical figures. This story is full of little inside jokes that only I will probably ever get. Those of you who know me well know that the annotated version of this story might be even more interesting than the story itself. For example, I needed a female character to find herself under attack, sacrifice a prized possession in defense of the attack, and ultimately lose the battle anyway. I sat down and thought about this for a while, tried to think of a time and a place where that occurred, and it suddenly struck me: Milan. I did a little research and came up with an appropriate name, at which point her personality burst forth like a firecracker.
The other day, as I was looking over my list of character sketches, it struck me that these people could be the stones in the hypothetical bridge. So, I decided to set the characters' names as the chapter titles. As the story jumps from one character to another, the reader will see the growth and development of Rich's character. Also, another trick I decided to employ as best I can: The chapters become progressively shorter as the story moves along. Rich will have less and less time to react to situations which involve increasingly larger stakes. This technique should speed up the pace of the story, and ultimately (hopefully) create a resounding climax at the conclusion of the story.
I would like to remind you that, despite my delinquent tendencies and juvenile sense of humor, this story is not a comic endeavor. As in daily life, you will find a number of humorously dumbfounding moments, but this is mostly a serious morality tale, possibly even a cautionary one if I ultimately choose to steer it in that direction.
I like this project the more I work on it, which is probably why I haven't finished it yet.
posted by Pat at 1:44 AM
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