In about four hours’ work today on Seems to Fit, I wrote just about two thousand words. Which was neither bad nor exceptional, and just fine — not least, because it brings me within perhaps a thousand words (but probably less) of The End.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of this last portion of the book:
- It departs from the structure of earlier drafts. For most of their length, they had consisted of a rotation of chapters, each from the point of view of a single character. But what I have always thought of as The Climactic Scene filled one enormous chapter, broken up into sections — one character per section, with some characters getting more than one section apiece. The Climactic Scene was followed by a chapter of denouement.
- Here in this draft, The Climactic Scene has been blown apart into — I don’t know — maybe ten or a dozen fragments: very very short chapters with (I hope) a sort of rising urgency. The action is much the same (and also much different, because I’ve now got an additional character in the mix: an active antagonist). But also, some of these short chapters are broken into sections: one character’s POV apiece. I’m hoping the effect will be that of, well, not chaos exactly, but of (y’know) Jesus Mary and Joseph there’s a lot going on…! We’ll see about that.
- But also in this draft there is not a denouement. More precisely, there are two of the things. The first (which I just completed) draws things to a close for every character but one. The second (coming up) will tie up the loose ends for the remaining character, as well as for the book as a whole.
This last-bulleted feature of the book’s construction feels unconventional to me. And — who knows? — I mean, on the one hand perhaps messing with convention just gives Agent X, Editor Y, and/or Reader Z one more potential reason not to bother committing to Seems to Fit. Which could even be the fatal reason, right?
So shouldn’t I play it safe, follow the “rules” (at least as I imagine them) and combine the two denouements into one?
