Plot: August 2007 Archives

Flashbacks only work if all the characters have them. Including Michael? He doesn’t really have a previous life of interest, though. The Helen flashbacks are interesting since we see her perspective on stuff we’ve only seen from Tim’s POV.

It’s a structural problem that the scenes work well in Helen of Santa Zita, but not so well in NFFN. So maybe they should be cut out? Or only included in the Helen-only path through the novel? One thing that’s interesting about the original version of NFFN was its immediacy—lack of back-story, flashbacks or context. You were just plunged into the characters’ live as they unfolded.

What's the sequence? Open with Michael's POV, then switch to Helen's.

What class is Helen teaching? And what book are they reading. In the NFFN version they are reading "Bartlebly the Scrivener." In HSZ it's changed to "China Men." I like both. Obviously I have to choose just one. It makes more sense for Helen to be teaching "Intro to American Fiction" since that's a lower division class.

Which is more effective? Seeing Michael getting dissed from his POV? Or from Helen's? Or both? Though that violates chronology. Switching at that moment? Michael feels his face burn, then slumps. Switch to Helen, trying to salvage the situation.

In terms of being a Virgilian figure to Michael at the beginning, Tim can't be too out of it. Otherwise why would Michael look to him for guidance? Perhaps one moment of despair is enough? Then Tim gets CFL (the golden bough) and is reborn. 

What are the character’s goals in Part I?

• Helen: Hang out with Tim again and get over Todd.
• Tim: become creatively inspired and psyched about something
• Michael: find a way to get closer to Helen and become known to her

If Tim isn't hanging out with Helen, why would he take Michael to her house? So maybe they should hang out during Part I, but it's awkward, at first. Then why doesn't Tim go to CFL? Still sort of pissed at her? Or she doesn't tell him? Calls him only at the last minute and Tim doesn't get the call until too late? She called him right after he left with Michael, or was in his room.

Napa weekend is like Easter Sunday. Friday at noon Karen calls Tim and says she’s not going to go. Tim gets really angry, fantasizes about breaking up. Enraged that he can’t make her do what he wants. Tim is in Hell until Sunday morning. He passes out in the vines, (hides in a cave?) Michael and Helen find him.

Does this mean Tim is Jesus though? And Helen and Michael are his disciples? Parodic anti-Jesus maybe.

What's the cave? Utility shack by the pool? Why would Tim pass out in there?

Right now I'm merging writing from several different projects into one document, which will serve as the basis for the project currently code-named Volume III. Tonight while riding home I contrasted the beginning scenes of Notes For a Future Novel with that of The Deep & Savage Way, both of which depict Michael in a lonely moment, regarding the dark woods behind his dorm.

I can't decide which I like better, or more importantly, which would be a better introduction to Volume III. Here for comparison, are the first four paragraphs of each. First, from Notes For a Future Novel:

The sun had set, but the moon would not rise for three hours. Michael Sullivan walked to the window and stared out to the dark wood outside. He lived in the uppermost floor of a college dormitory which stood six stories tall, holding back the forest like a dark green sea behind.

A layer of fog had moved in from the ocean and hidden the stars from the university campus on the hill, of which Michael's dormitory was a part. He retreated from the view, back to his desk. He sat and read back what he had written minutes before:

Without a clear conception of the proper path, Roger felt himself lost. Although Roger did not know which way to go, he did realize his lack of direction. If he had the failing of being unsure of the proper course; at least he knew of his shortcomings, unlike the great number of his fellows for whom ignorance was a welcome bliss.

That was where he had stopped typing. Michael felt he was lost in his own words. The words on the page were for Helen Zachary, for the novel he intended to write for her. Helen Zachary was Michael's TA in his Introduction to American Fiction class, and he was very much in love with her.

[Read the rest]

Now, the DSW version:

Michael Sullivan looked at his calendar and saw that it was the middle day of the middle week of the middle quarter of his first year at college, and he had still never gotten drunk, never had a group of friends and never kissed a girl.

He had seen all three of these things happening around him in the dorm he lived in at the University of California, Santa Zita. The day he and the other freshman had moved in, they had started drinking, partying, hanging out, but not with him. Somehow, by the way he looked and acted, they had seen he didn't fit in, and their new life had begun without him.

Michael attended classes, wrote papers, ate at the dining hall, but except for occasional brief conversations with his floor mates, he had no social life. Not that they were unfriendly to him. They just had a way of speaking and moving around him that told Michael he was not a part of their world.

Time had passed quickly. Already halfway through winter quarter. Halfway! And he was no closer to doing any of the things that his hall-mates took for granted, that they had been doing since high school, or even before. And worse, he saw no way out of the rut he was in. None of the cheerful pamphlets the university administration had handed out to them mentioned how to be accepted, how to find out where the parties are and how to show up at them and be welcomed.

[read the rest]

The biggest difference, of course, is that the first scene contains an element of meta-fiction, as you see a selection from the novel Michael is writing for the section leader he has a crush on, Helen. That's an element of the story I eliminated from DSW as I was trying to get away from the extreme meta-fiction of NFFN. However, I wonder if I lost some of the humor and irony in doing so. Meta-fiction is one device for adding tension in a world which lacks a lot of explicit, external impetus, and is very true to the world that the characters inhabit.

The DSW version more explicitly refers to the beginning of Dante’s Inferno:  “the middle of our life”, Among other tings, the Divine Comedy is the first fictional depiction of a “mid-life crisis” only with religion as the answer not a younger mate or trading in the station wagon for a sports car. Of course, with  a college student, I had to change it from the middle of one’s life since they are just beginning theirs. So for Michael it’s the middle of his freshman year, for Helen and Tim and it’s the middle of their time in Santa Zita. I also opened the novel on a Wednesday, the middle day of the week, to heighten the effect. Conveniently enough, Valentine’s Day 1990 really was on a Wednesday.