Oh the places you’ll go
A good story is a voyage of discovery, and it can be as much of a journey for the writer themselves!
I’m continuing with my WIP! I’ve talked previously about my writing approach, so back in November I sketched out the key parts and dialog for two pivotal scenes in Book Two.
This article will look at those scenes and how I’ve played around with them to build up the padding and interaction around them — a masterclass if you will!
Avoiding major spoilers, but Melody is dealing with consequences, and punishments for what she got up to in Book One, and being unfairly punished by authorities.
SCENE ALPHA
How would her mother react? Like most parents, Mum tends to side with authority challenging Melody about what she’s been up to, wanting to hear for herself.
Mum isn’t a bad person, but there can often be sparks between them. I don’t want Melody revealing all to Mum right now, but I need a way to get Mum ‘on side’.
I decided to use Melody’s mental health. It’s revealed in book one that Melody suffers from trauma after being attacked. I wanted Melody to come home, and Mum pounce on her about why she’s in trouble.
But rather than turn into a full fight (we had a couple in book one), I wanted the idea of dealing with everything Melody has on her plate plus her Mum siding with her oppressors just be too much for Melody. It would cause her to have a visible breakdown.
Easier said than done — I myself am bipolar, and suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I want to be genuine in how I treat mental health.
My first attempt broke down into hysterical crying. But I didn’t really like it. I know a couple of times I’ve had something bad happen, and I just freeze and withdraw. Looking it up it’s called catatonic depression (also related more with bipolar than depression), but it felt a better fit.
Rather than get into a fight, Melody would just basically freeze up. A warning sign to her Mum (who’d seen it before) that something was seriously up with her daughter.
It felt a much better fit. But I wanted to be wary to introduce a condition which worked for one scene but might be thrown away later. If this is how she reacts occasionally, we’ll have to use it again (and I can think of a couple of examples of future events where it’ll make sense).
Also looking back to book one, there’s a scene where Melody is attacked, and she likewise initially freezes in panic before taking action. So that makes sense.
SCENE BETA
The follow on scene to this is Mum trying to show Melody that she’ll wear the same shame as her daughter. Melody is being made to wear an orange uniform to show that the’s broken the law, and a lot of people on the colony are shunning her over it.
Mum picks a fight with a member of the Council to get the same punishment as her daughter. She ends up stripping to her underwear telling the Council member who authorised the punishment of Melody she’ll take the same orange boiler suit of shame in a size ten. This causes several members of the colony who’re fed up with the way things are to do the same — it’s called “the Spartacus epidemic”.
In the end, I felt a need to not rush from Alpha to Beta, this was part of my journey on writing.
I ended up writing a new scene with Mum and Melody’s girlfriend Julia. To date they’ve never really had any time together. This scene felt like a reverse Bechdel test — two women talking about another woman. [Sorry boys]
It allows Mum to say that she knows Melody is in some trouble, but doesn’t know the whole story. Julia confirms she’s doing her best to help her.
Mum is able to elaborate about the catatonic behaviour, and warn Julia about how Melody will be. It also allows for a couple of plotpoints — Julia can talk about how “wearing the orange” is used (often unfairly), and Mum can talk about how they’re trying to support Melody without rushing her to MedBay and putting her back on medication.
But mostly it allows these two pivotal characters in Melody’s life to connect together. Something I’m surprised I haven’t talked about.
This led afterwards to a scene where Julia visits Melody, and is just trying to spend time with her, let her know she’s there. Some of this was serious, and a little bit was fun.
Julia has managed to talk the head chef into parting with some chocolate — on the Moonbase, genuine chocolate is a rare luxury. Julia says she hope it’ll cheer Melody up, to which Melody replies it only works really on Dementors in Harry Potter.
It also has this line,
“I don’t have the healthiest relationship with food, but just for a moment when it’s melting on your tongue, it feels like all you worries are melting with it. A fleeting pulse of endorphins,” I admitted.
It ends with Melody describing how they lay next to each other. Sometimes they just linked their fingers together so they knew the other one was there.
Overall not much needed for the plot, but a very beautiful scene.
Finally I looked at these five scenes which have devoured a fortnight getting right. The problem is it’s very heavily Melody with her Mum or her girlfriend. Melody’s Dad seems to have jumped the Moon!
I ended going back to a small line where Mum brought Melody breakfast, and changed it to Dad. Dad’s also been going through some issues himself. He was part of a failed rescue, and has become a bit withdrawn ever since. Someone who was very happy-go-lucky has become a lot quieter and more serious.
I wrote this really key exchange between them where Dad talks about getting where she’s at. Melody talks about feeling worried about the catatonia — she’d hoped it would never come back, and feels like she failed.
Dad seems to not be listening and makes it all about him, talks about how he knows he’s become more withdrawn, how selfish it feels, how he feels he’s failed as a husband and father, to which Melody says he shouldn’t blame himself, he’s only human and he’s reacting to things he’s been through.
Dad then asks why she can’t tell herself the same thing. To which Melody says “it doesn’t work like that … sometimes you can give others the benefit of the doubt, but so much harder to do that for yourself”.
It felt another important scene between those characters. Not serving the plot but the characters.
All these things happen when you’re writing and exploring the ideas you’re crafting. Probably in editing some of this will have to be removed as duplication, but overall it roughly seems to balance out and allow for some important moments. But these scenes have taken about 2–3 weeks to get working correctly.
