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Business As Usual

On Singapura

Singapura is quite a different undertaking from The River. With The River, I had an ending in mind, right from the beginning. The whole story was developed from that ending sequence. The things that had to happen, the themes, the characters… Everything took root from the ending. Over time, I had a discernible plan and satisfied with most of the details, I just dove in and let it rip.

Singapura feels quite removed from that type of developmental process. For one thing, it certainly involves a greater depth of ideas, most of which I don’t yet have. It has a significantly greater degree of complexity, in the sense that it’s not so straightforward and not so one-track-mind-ish. I kind of know what I want to do in the ending sequence (again, yes, development began with an ending), but it’s far from clear how I’m going to go about it. The ending, I mean; I’m not even worrying about the lead-up yet.

I’m going to allow a longer gestation period. I have a few months to spare, I think. I’ll try writing here and there, but I expect quite a few false starts. All part and parcel, I suppose. I think the best I can expect at this time is just a bunch of useable fragments. I’ll worry about the actual writing later.

In the meantime, I’ll be hoping to settle on a firm plan. A solid outline of the story, for one. Requirements in form, for another. Concepts and themes, and all that stuff will come along the way. For now, I just have a bunch of characters, and I’m still wondering how they’ll interact. We’ll see.

On The River

I’ll be going back to work on The River soon, with the intention of producing a third draft. After staying away for these weeks, I get the feeling that I’ll be extending it a bit. The big idea is basically to provide it with more body. There are parts that are perhaps far more direct and bare than I had originally intended them to be, whatever the reason, so I’ll be looking to fix that. There are a couple of thematic items that I would also like to reinforce, and I’ll see how things work out as I go along.

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© 2008 a modest odyssey.