Published: March 28th 2017, 1:21:16 pm
I don't know how to structure a novel. I'm not sure I really know how to structure anything, which is why I do burlesque so much. It's a built in structure to hang something on. It's a weird mystery that I've tried to analyze for a long time. And I'm just not fucking good at it. I've read a lot of writing advice and very little of it talks about structuring a novel. Most of it just boils down to "write a lot and then edit" which, is...true but also lacking in some important ways. And it's really fucking frustrating to put *this* much work into something only to have it be ok.
So I was sad for a while. Then I ate an insane ice cream sandwich that my boyfriend made out of chocolate cookies with chocolate chips and chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it. I somehow avoided a diabetic coma, and then thought about it in the shower for a while.
Right now the book is kind of divided up into sections, one where she's a maid and her employer's daughter is her best friend, and then she gets fired and there's a section where she's a sex worker who's in love with her client, and they don't really interact until she finds out her client is engaged to her (now former) best friend. But it occurred to me that in most adaptations of Cinderella, the Cinderella character is always in danger of being caught. So why not smoosh those chunks together? Have her never get fired and just be a maid during the day and a sex worker by night? It makes everything more immediate and it ups the drama when she and her best friend find out they're in love with the same guy.
But why is she working this hard? I always had this vague idea of the main character being driven by the desire to make her mother proud. That's an understandable motivating factor, but not a very specific, attainable, goal, especially since her mother is dead.
So I started re-reading The Girls of the Kingfisher Club. It's the book I've been modeling mine on for a few years now because it is also a realistic retelling of a fairy tale, set in 1920s new york, and it's a DAMN GOOD BOOK. It spans about the same time frame as my book but has zero structure and pacing problems. I read the first two chapters and realized the main thing that my book was missing: a ticking clock. There's a very tangible and time sensitive disaster that the main character is constantly working to avoid or mitigate and it's directly tied to her main drive.
In Cinderella stories, the ticking clock is usually tied to the prince having to get married by his 25th birthday or the countdown to him finding out that she is actually a maid. But that has nothing to do with my main character's mother. And I don't really want her main drive to be just marrying some guy, especially since she doesn't marry him in the end. I'd written about her having fantasies of owning her own dress shop some day but, again, not terribly dramatic or timely.
I'd written that her mother was a seamstress who'd come from a family of dressmakers and tailors and had been disowned after she fell in love with a goy. So what if she doesn't just want to buy a dress shop, she wants to buy the FAMILY dress shop? And it goes on sale before she has enough money saved up? Suddenly she's desperate to make more money and marrying a rich guy seems like the answer to her prayers.
So in less than 24 hours I've managed to go from "I'll never be able to do this" to "I think I know what to do now!" It might take another freaking year to put together a new draft and get more feedback, and edit again and do another line edit.........But at least I'm not giving up?
Seriously, though. I need to remind myself that the transition from impossible to difficult is a big step. And it's not always as hard as I think it'll be.