Before you go into the comments area and look at your questions, I'd like to say the following things about them. These are intended to spark thoughts for you about how to tune your excerpts - NOT as explicit instructions for changes.
You might want to look back at my blog posting titled "Critique and the Writer's Compass" for further discussion of what I mean, but I'll say it again.
These are not commands or explicit instructions. They are opportunities.
Follow your instincts for balance and tone. For example, if I have made similar comments in two different areas of the manuscript, and you feel that the issue is sufficiently addressed in one place and doesn't need to show up in the second, trust yourself.
Also, if you have questions about my questions, or don't know what I mean in any spot, please ask me. This is not a test and it is not a puzzle for you to solve. What I've tried to do as I read through these manuscripts is to point out places where things could be changed subtly to expand the sense of world, sometimes through clarification but many times just by the addition of an implication or two.
Juliette, you are forgiven. I have two ideas on breaking that knowledge set, both of which I had before reading your comments (the workshop has really focussed me on this story).
ReplyDeleteThe first idea is a full description of her (slightly redesigned) body shape. The second is changing the arcati diet to pure carnivore (but not the sort of carnivore that is able to physically compete with the larger predators in the sea). If she snatches herself some small fish, and eats it raw in front of the reader, that should make it clear that this ain’t no Disney picture. :)
The arcati used to have a higher civilisation, but when the ice caps melted and the entire planet flooded, the survivors were those who were genetically engineered to survive in the sea. Much of their former technology was lost. This is revealed later, when the humans start exploring the arcati planet. (At least, that’s the plan. The entire human exploration currently consists of about six lines of dialogue. Must. Write. More.)
So the arcati have some knowledge that you wouldn’t expect a purely aquatic species to have. They know about space (the Greater Void), but their fledgling space program died when the sea levels rose.
The arcati no longer have the capacity to reach space, but hey, a girl can dream. Spaceflight just isn’t going to happen, but she can look at the stars, and dream.
And dreaming is better than having to face the fact that she is soon going to have to choose her career. The Great Reef doesn’t have any Watchers (she’ll have to travel to another reef for her apprenticeship, but at the opening of the story, there seems little prospect of that), so her options are limited to tasks of little interest to her. Something that I’m going to have to make clear in the text.
The Lord of Astrophysics is only in charge of the Watchers, the sad remnants of the arcati astronomers guild. Society has regressed to a feudal level, with various petty kings and queens ruling different reefs. Again, something I’ll have to make clear.
As for luxury -- one luxury available only to Lords and children is leisure. The arcati race is in trouble -- the environment has too many predators for a smart-but-physically-not-so-powerful species that has limited technological options. Most adult arcati face a back-breaking burden of work just to keep their heads below water :)
So maybe that’s it -- her last chance to stargaze before she has to turn her back on childhood and face the responsibilities of an adult.
More later...
The Lord is also going to be fat, unlike most arcati who work too hard and get too little to eat. As in some cultures that have existed here on earth, wealth is displayed by conspicuous (over)consumption.
ReplyDeleteWithout the help of a Watcher-specific device that I’m busily inventing even as we speak :), an arcati cannot keep her head above water and watch the stars and keep her gills underwater at the same time. The arcati still have vestigial lungs from their heritage as land-walkers (which will puzzle the humans when they first scan her insides). This enables them to hold some oxygen absorbed from seawater through their gills, and to cough and splutter when things go wrong, but what remains isn’t enough to enable them to breathe the atmosphere.
I originally wrote the fluorescing gills because I thought the imagery was cool. No better reason. Now, as I establish that most predators are most active at night, the fluorescing gills are gone. She’s not going to go out at night and do something that makes her light up like a Christmas tree when there are night-hunting predators. She’s foolish, but not suicidal.
I’ll have to come up with a less visible image.
Now, the Eater of All Life. The land-dwelling arcati had a religion based on two equally powerful gods; one a force for good, and the other evil. When the seas rose and devoured the land, the evil god(dess) became associated with the deepest, lightless depths of the all-devouring ocean, and thus with darkness. The logical extension was that the (relatively) safe hours of daylight were the time of the good god(dess?), who became associated with light and the sun.
So the Eater lives in the lightless depths, and comes out at night (as do Her children i.e. many predators are nocturnal). Something I need to clarify in the text. Does the Eater live in the Greater Void (space?). There will be some arcati who think so, and will never willingly travel into space. For those who do, there are ceremonies to appease the Eater.
Should she be worried about predators? Oh, yes. The climax of the scene does involve a bloodray. But she has taken some sensible precautions (which have only come about through this workshop :)). Unfortunately, the bloodray has figured out how to get around those precautions.
Why does she keep looking? At this point in the (revised) storyline, she doesn’t think she’ll ever again have the chance to spend her time gazing in wonder upon the stars. She’s trying to store up the sight, so that she can take it out again and replay it in her mind during the years of hard labour that await her.
Her gills are like hundreds of small tentacles that cover her head and the back of her neck. If she floats on her back, with her gills in the water, she can breathe -- but her view of the stars will be blocked because every passing wave will pass over her face. So she needs to swim upright, raising her head (and gills) out of the water.
Her mother reaches out of the water to grab her gills. This is intentionally a painful thing, the equivalent of a human mother physically twisting the ear of her wayward offspring.
Something has sneaked up on her and grabbed her. She doesn’t know what it is, but her first fearful thought is that it’s a predator. Even though any real predator would have just bitten whatever tender parts of her anatomy were within reach.
And dialogue…this story has been a bit different from the way I usually write. Normally, my first drafts look like a movie script, with dialogue, dialogue everywhere, and maybe a few stage directions pencilled in. This story is all actions and no words. Yet.
I’m working on actual words to put in her mother’s mouth in place of “lecturing”.
P.S. I know you said that I didn't have to write out the answers like I did, but I find it helps me to clarify the ideas I'll be taking into the revised draft.
ReplyDeleteDavid- I really enjoyed reading about your thought process. My first drafts totally look like scripts too. So nice to hear I'm not alone. :)
ReplyDelete-K.
David,
ReplyDeleteI like your thinking. It's often good to write this stuff out, particularly in the early stages of hashing things out (I have files and files).
I don't have much problem with anything except her thinking she's been grabbed by a predator. The grabbing of her gills is so punishment-specific, so calculated and probably so familiar, that I'd think she would know instantly what it was.
One more thought - if they were once land dwellers, I don't think their way of thinking about the stars would be entirely lost. Some might call them reefs, but there might be alternate ways of describing them that seem more land-based, which our young protagonist who cares about stars might know about, be curious about but not understand.
K - Totally script-like. I'm glad that my comments helped you realise that You Are Not Alone :)
ReplyDeleteJuliette - I think I have the solution. First, she feels the water moving, like She Is Not Alone. Her first fearful thought is that a predator has managed to find her. Before she can do anything more than gasp in terror, she is grabbed by the gills. She wonders why a predator would grab her there. Then she sees her mother's face...
ReplyDeleteHmmm. A land-based description would probably mutate over the years, as young arcati who never knew the land ask their elders "What's a tree?", and are told that it is something like an upright spire of coral, with short strands of kelp (leaves) and even brightly-coloured anenomes (flowers).
ReplyDeleteSo, I could keep the Milky Way as a bright reef, but maybe she could wonder if it really is an enormous pantheon of bright solar gods very far away, just like the ancient stories say...
Which would make the Watchers a priesthood, rather than a guild...
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying about the arcati's beliefs about the stars leads me to believe that their ancient civilization was of a lower technology level than you've been describing. For example, if the stars are considered to be gods now, they probably were then as well. I can't see a society like that having anything resembling a space program. You might want to think through the ancient disaster as well. How long did it take for the water to swamp the land? How did people respond? How long would the genetic modifications have taken, vs. how long would they have had to try to preserve their cultural knowledge in waterproof ways? If the swamping was fast, I could see that they'd lose a lot, but the population would be devastated as well. Unless a program of undersea living was already deliberately underway - in which case, why wouldn't they have tried to make the people amphibious?
See what I mean?
Juliette,
ReplyDeleteI do see what you mean. What I'm thinking is this:
We humans have a technological civilisation, and a space program. We also have religion, although much of it is monotheistic rather than the ancient pantheistic religions of, say, Greco/Roman times.
The arcati had a similar tech level to our current level, although you wouldn't know it today if you didn't look very closely.
Their land-based civilisation was duotheistic(?), worshipping a good god and trying to appease/avoid the notice of a bad god. But their religion has changed since the great flood.
It's only since they returned to the sea, with mostly nocturnal predators, that their good god has become associated with the sun (because he drives away the worst of the light-sensitive predators).
They remember that their sun is merely one of many. The logical (religious) extension of that idea is that the stars are gods, too.
And when the human explorers look closely, they are going to find what remains of the arcati attempts to preserve their technology and culture in waterproof ways.
In a taboo area known as the Reef of the Dead.