wherein Liz is tired and grumpy

[edenfalling]

I'm working on my last mini-ficlet prompt meme fill (Susan and Lucy Pevensie have An Adventure that begins in the Cair Paravel pantry and involves some rambunctious Talking Otter cubs), and I have hit A Dilemma. See, I have passed my minimum length requirement (500 words), and now I have two choices:

1) Wrap the thing up in one more scene and end on a dramatic (but cheerful) cliffhanger as the Adventure begins, which shouldn't take more than another 250 words.

2) Actually write the whole ridiculous Adventure in moderate detail, which would probably take at least 1500 words -- quite possibly more -- and require me to actually think about a bunch of logistical stuff and family bickering and four very young and very bouncy OCs.

Ideally the answer would be #2, but I am kind of tired and really ought to be working on my WIP Big Bang entry, and I don't know if I am up to cheerful shenanigans at the moment. *sigh*

...I think I'll go take a short nap and hope things look clearer afterward.

Comments

[edenfalling]

*offers sympathy tea and cookies*

Mine is just, like... first of all, romances with external barriers (ie, something/someone is stopping Our Heroes from getting together) annoy me because that makes the resolution external as well instead of a moment of internal character growth; secondly, oh god politics and prejudice and ARGH; and thirdly, constantly shifting POVs and time/place jumps look nice on paper as a way to string together a narrative without having to worry about all the little connecting bits, but in practice I have to write all those narrative voices and keep them distinct, and also make sure the jumps don't leave readers confused over how we got from point A to point H. *headdesk*

Some days I think I hate writing as much as I love it.

[the_rck]

If I recall correctly, we're both writing Narnia stories, just very different stories.

My logistical hitch is that I'm writing from Jadis' POV. I want to end up with her dead, and she can't see it coming, but I have to write it so that readers will see it coming, see it as something inevitable.

[edenfalling]

Ooh. Yeah, that's tricky. I tried that once with a Naruto fic -- the POV character was an OC assassination target -- and it was an interesting challenge to make clear what roles the canon characters had taken, who had hired them, why they were letting certain events play out instead of killing him immediately, and how their plan was going to snap shut around this guy, without letting him suspect his danger until the very end (particularly since he wasn't stupid). I still wound up with several readers surprised at the 'revelation' of one particular character's disguise, which surprised me because even though it wasn't as obvious as his teammates' covers, I'd signposted it several times before that 'aha' moment! *headdesk*

I think one thing that can help is if your POV character is arrogant. That way you can have them notice and dismiss as irrelevant small clues that readers will know are actually important. Also, I don't know where you're going AU from canon, but you can sometimes use small callbacks to canon events/characterizations to give readers a sign what your non-POV characters may be thinking or planning.

[the_rck]

The prompt that started me off was a request for darkfic in which the White Witch wins. The simplest way to get that was for Aslan not to show up, but I started off by having Tumnus actually turn Lucy over to Jadis.

Jadis has been pretty unhappy with ruling Narnia because the whole point of doing it, from her point of view, was to hurt Aslan and she's had no sign that he's even noticed. I'm taking the backstory from my fic, Faded Colors, for Jadis, so she's been alive for a very, very long time without any of the things that she once considered essential. All the pleasures of the flesh are barred to her (that seemed like the thing most likely to make her wish for immortality something that would come true in a way she would regret). She kind of wants to die, but admitting that would be admitting weakness. It's not something that she can accept in herself.

She decides that the Pevensies can be a long term project, just to see what she can teach them, what she can turn them into. She has some vague idea that putting them on the thrones as her puppets might be interesting, but that's not really her goal. It's also still not satisfying because, much as she hopes it might upset Aslan, he still hasn't shown up or given any indication that he's noticed.

I'm writing from Jadis' POV in part because I don't think I can bear to write it from any of the children's points of view. But I also find her kind of fascinating in the truths and lies she tells herself and in the things she doesn't look at.