Hmmm… So I have Va’el, the bastard son of a bastard son of an emperor, who’s heading for a good dose of trouble – and I have another character thrown into a different batch of stress and pain – totally unrelated, but both events are far reaching, both necessary to the plot and both (of course) meant to engage the reader – I wanted these scenes spaced apart simply so that readers are not, in this instance, pulled in two different directions (sometimes that’s exactly what I want, but on this occasion it would be detrimental).
The natural unfolding of the story to date unfortunately brought the onset of both scenes to roughly the same point, which is something I needed to avoid. So, then came the who-goes-first game, which wasn’t/isn’t even easy in my imagination (because of scope – in the imagination is easiest, but I am juggling not so much giant scenes as a series of biggish ones, each an evolution) – never mind on paper, which is much more complex.
Just how far apart they have to be from each other is yet another consideration.
*
However, I seem to have resolved the issue. The trials and troubles of these characters are not incidental, but structural to the plot, so what each goes through will take the story somewhere. Each thread has a destination.
Both sets of trouble are brutal, but in different ways. Both will prove long-lasting and game-changing. In effect, I’m looking at two halves of the book. Therefore, automatically and inescapably, the two sides overlap. How can they not? The actual crunch part of their experiences is what I want to keep apart, but the consequences and developments that come are what makes the plot (I knew that).
In the end the answer was easy, and that means I don’t have to go through all the fluffing about I thought I would yesterday in Thread Weaving and a Tangle of “Nots”.
This story is more deeply about Va’el and his trials, so Va’el has to go first.
Simple really.
See? Sometimes it pays just to chat. 😀
Cheers!
Allyson
Bloodstone Sci Fi 
Omg I wrote this whole profound comment on possibilities for this and of course the Internet snafud!!! I’ll write it again tomm.
godspeed and happy muses..
o and om
Sorry I missed it! No problem – it’s good to see you pop in. Take care, you and O both. Keep warm and all that, I hear it’s going to be a cold winter.
hi a.d.
o and i are back and at a fully realized 70 key keyboard, so we can attempt to rewrite what we said yesterday.
glad you solved your layout for the book. i thought it would be interesting if you switched between the two tales and the characters in each have almost a psychic sense/innate sense of what the other is doing.. ghost pains, etc. so when one gets hurt the other reacts to it in his side of the story- but for reasons not fully explained until the end comes together. i think that would be a really intersting way to connect the action between the two. even if the characters are living at differnt times it could come across as like a parallel universe experience.
or you could also have the story lines connected in a way where if someone drops something on the floor in story line 1.. the person in 2 is picking up something from somewhere in the vert next lines/words the reader sees.. however its clear its a differnent character in his/her continuing chapter. so the action never really breaks. how seamless you can make it will be a testament to your genius. would prob be really fun and interesting to write as well.
just a few ideas to throw around.
we know its your book and it will be great, but thought i would add in some outside ideas. you never know. maybe it could work..
hugs,
o and om
(that pretty much sums up what we said yesterday, just not as poetic. hope what we did say makes sense/inspires/helps)
Actually I LOVE stories like that. A real adventure. These two in mine are connected in the same time bracket, but for one of them at least, I have an equally “weird” connection happening further along, that does indeed play into time (forward and back). You must have been using some of that psychic stuff yourself and picked up on it. 😀
Part of the fun of writing a series is that the further along you go, the greater the parts (characters) that must mesh into the whole – which is the subject of my next post, if I can make it work!
Thank you for your suggestions and wonderful insight. From such good chats, wonderful things can indeed happen.
Hugs to you both. 😀
I love this. It sounds epic. Best of luck to you, and I can’t wait to see how they come together. Your courage and willingness to jump into it are inspiring.
Hi Writingsprint! 🙂 Thank you. It’s all fun, of course, but your kind words are most definitely appreciated.
Cheers!