Master of Follow-Through
Once there was a writer who wrote a book. A thick book, with a lot of blood and screaming inside. The monsters were the heroes and normal people, the villains. There were talking rivers and two-headed deer and several references to a certain capital city that smells faintly of piss and plague around every corner. The leader of the monsters was a selfish girl who lost all her toenails, sacrificed on the altar (a stage) to her god (dance).
For reasons that behoove me, dear reader, people seemed like this and ask for more.
And the writer was eager to oblige because (1) this exact moment was 20 years in the making, (2) there’s a lot more where that came from—too much, in fact—and (3) the writer is a Sagittarius sun, Taurus moon, and Libra rising with little regard for authority and what others might consider “smart” and “safe” choices.
So that writer said, “Fuck yeah, let’s do it,” and marched into the circles of hell that is publishing without so much as a backwards glance. They prepared a newsletter, but forgot about it because holy shit have you seen the Phlegethon? A river of boiling blood and fire? How does that even work? And there are centaurs patrolling its shores, shooting down any head that breaks the surface. There goes Madeline Albright.
Whoops got carried away there.
ANYWAY, hi, hello, welcome to another edition of Jamison’s Inferno The Hell Dispatch. Glad to see ya.
Book Updates 📰
I FEED HER TO THE BEAST AND THE BEAST IS ME is the book that will never die. She is back!
Last month, my fair agent reviewed the aforementioned manuscript, and it came to my attention that, in fixing some things, I broke other things. Continuity and logic are unfortunately elements that are valued in the storytelling world, so I have returned to the world of treacherous ballerinas hiding razorblades in pointe shoes and breaking bones for Totally Legitimate Reasons™.
While I am deathly afraid of breaking even more things, I am also allergic to backing down. It’s a beautiful state of being.
PROJECT PICKLE (working title) is over the 50% mark, meaning half of the story has been told in some coherent fashion. I have not yet figured out a way to incorporate my much desired skeleton army, but fear not: there are skeletons. I just have to find a way to make them dance. (Should I reference “Danse Macabre” in every book I write as my signature? I think so.)
So far all of it is certifiably garbage as all first drafts are, but I did manage to write a couple decent paragraphs about the merits of Buffalo pizza, so. Yeah. Things are going great.
The Craft Corner 🎨
This month’s craft corner is a little, fun chit-chat about character agency. By this I mean I am going to babble on what it is and how to do the thing, as this is one of the adjustments that I’ve made in I FEED HER TO THE BEAST. So *pats seat beside me on the couch* let’s talk.
A lot of craft blogs and books tend to approach character by way of actions—a character is an important person who is doing something. They tell you that a character should be moving, doing things, going places, having thoughts. Yes, sure, great. However, just because a character is performing an action doesn’t mean they have agency.
A character has agency when they are making conscious decisions about their life and actions.
For example, let’s say your room is messy. Cleaning is an action, so if you start cleaning it, congratulations, you are technically an active protagonist. However, what’s important in figuring out agency is considering who made that choice. If your mom walked by and told you to clean it, and like a robot, you obey—then this isn’t agency. You didn’t make a choice. But imagine: your mother rewards you with ice cream when your room is clean; your mother punishes you if your room isn’t clean; you keep tripping over piles of dirty laundry and you’re fed up.
In each of those scenarios, regardless of context, you make a choice (the quality of the choice is another story): for ice cream, to avoid punishment, frustration. Agency, in my humblest opinion, is less about what inspires the action and more about knowing a character is consciously doing a thing for a reason.
Conveying agency on page is tricky. It’s not enough for your character to just do something or respond to a problem in a certain way—the reader needs to follow the line of thought that gets them there. For example,
John walks into his room and trips over a pile of books. One hour later, John finds himself at in IKEA.
There’s something missing, right? There is a gap in logic that the reader cannot cross (because it’s not there). However, let’s be a little more explicit:
John walks into his room and trips over a pile of books. He says to himself, “It’s so messy, and I’m sick of tripping over stuff. I need somewhere to put these books so that they’re out of my way.” John decides to go to IKEA to buy a bookcase.
The outcome is the same (John at IKEA), but the amount of agency that John exhibits is different.
It’s worth noting that this is a simplistic and very privileged way of looking at character agency because, again, it is based on “choice.” But what happens if a character is in a situation where they have been systemically denied choices or all the choices look the same? If their only “choice” is to minimize harm to themself and others (more philosophically, how much of a choice is that)? If forced to choose the better of two evils, is that really a choice or an illusion of one?
(I don’t have an answer for you. I accidentally led myself down a spiral of existential dread.)
Anyway, my rule of thumb right now is to just make those small decisions abundantly clear. To overcommunicate (I can always pare back the repetition). A character saying “I chose to do nothing because it’s not my problem” is more active than the one doing nothing in silence.
Word Candy 🍬
I straight up forgot about this because I don’t plan anything anymore. As a result, I’ve pulled a random poetry book off my shelf and opened to a random page and here is the random poem that I have found:
the girl learns to fly.
she is a fish.
the hook is in the water.
she willingly thrusts her body onto the hook
all for a better look at the stars.
— Sabrina Benaim, “magic trick 002” from Depression & Other Magic Tricks (2017)
And a little Digestif 🧉
Honestly too lazy to cook up some fun, clever outro here, so go forth into the night.
LISTENING: “Cruel” by Korine, which is not metal for once. The music video is 1:1 for PROJECT PICKLE’s vibes.
WATCHING: Youtuber North of the Border, making a realistic Lego Man out of clay (cursed)
READING: I just finished Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow and I loved it. Picking up A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers next.
À la votre! Happy weekend! Hyvää viikonloppua! ❤️