Jots and Tittles

Wow, am I wired right now.  I'm also SO stoked.  You see, I just wrote what will probably be one of the hardest scenes in my whole novel, and I'm actually rather pleased with the result.  For those of you who don't know, I'm doing a retelling (ish) of Cinderella.  Only, my MC (or, for you non-writerly types, that's "main character"), Sarah, decided to run away from home when her stepmother chose to enslave her, instead of waiting around for things to change.  She runs to Athelai, the capital city, to seek the help of the prince.  When she runs into the prince, though, it turns out that he's trying to get away from his evil uncle (who wants to kill him) - but he's doing it by going to Sarah's old house, Pebeworde, for sanctuary.  What Sarah knows, and the prince doesn't, is that her stepmother is actually on the evil uncle's side, only instead of killing the prince she wants him to marry her daughter Louisa.  So, she goes with him back to Pebeworde and on the way convinces him that he's running to danger, not to sanctuary.  She also asks him for help, which he agrees to give, since she is able to offer proof (her mother's ring, which bears the family seal on it, never leaves the chain about her neck) that she is who she says he is.  They cook up this story about her being Lady Camia DuBois, the prince's lady love, so that he will have an excuse to ignore Louisa, and for a while, the stepmother believes it, and though she hates Sarah for "stealing" the prince, she is none the wiser.  Oh, and while they're pretending to be in love, Sarah and Prince Charming (aka Christopher), start actually falling in love - only, this is a fairy tale, so of course they can't actually SAY they're in love, because then there would be no angst, and what's a YA fairy tale retelling without some seemingly-unrequited-love-angst?

Anyway, on to the scene I just finished writing.  See, one of the men in the prince's party turns out to be working for the stepmother the whole time, and he finally gets the chance to take the stepmother aside and tell her who Sarah is.  Of course, the stepmother sees the truth immediately, and as soon as Sarah goes to bed for the night, Lady Renault (that's the stepmom) follows her and confronts her.  This confrontation is huge, and it tears down EVERYTHING in Sarah's world that was going well.  They get into this huge shouting match, where Sarah, for the first time, asserts her claim on her home and FINALLY stands up to her stepmother.  But of course it goes terribly for her.  Her stepmother tramples all over her, and then tells her exactly what's going to happen, which also happens to be a systematic stripping away of everything Sarah has come (unconsciously) to rely on.  She is first told that, either she makes Christopher think that she's been on Lady R's side this whole time and was leading him on, etc., or else Lady R has her handy henchman off the prince, and Louisa can marry the king because hey, what's one royal to another, eh?  Strike one, she loses the prince. Then Lady R finds Sarah's bluestone (not like stonehenge's bluestone, it's different, I just haven't come up with a better name for it yet) pendant, which (though Sarah thinks right now is only a pretty stone) has magical properties which have helped her in the past, though she doesn't know it yet, and which she is going to need down the road.  Strike two, there goes the magical help. THEN, and this is the final straw, the final stripping away of every shred of anything Sarah has ever owned, loved, needed, etc., she takes the ring. Strike three, there goes Sarah's only remaining link to the past from whence she draws her strength and her identity.  She has NOTHING left.

As you can imagine, this kind of scene is REALLY hard to write.  Or maybe you can't imagine.  But I've been dancing around it since Sunday, knowing it needed to be written (though I'm glad Sarah got her day helping Laura's family, first), but I was SO reluctant to do it.  I have never made it this far into a story before, or at least not a story I intended to publish, or one that was any good (or worthy of being called a story in the first place... last year's attempt was more a pile of steaming crap than a story), so I don't really have any experience writing this kind of scene.  I usually get so bogged down in exposition that NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.  And that's not becoming a problem this year, for which I am grateful.  I should really plan out my stories in more detail when I write, because it seems to be helping.  Or do the Shannon Hale thing and write fairy tale rewrites for a career, but whatever.  Anyway, the point is, this was the first of the really difficult scenes to write (the next one is going to be when Sarah has to tell the prince the lie Lady R has invented for her, which I get to do tomorrow), and I did it!  And, though it definitely needs some heavy editing (hey, the first draft of anything is shit, says Hemingway), it's actually a pretty decent scene!  Or, at least, it has the potential to become so.  Which is good, because this one and the one for tomorrow are pretty much the crux of Sarah's story, the point where she has to stop relying on everyone else and start relying on herself.  This is The Dramatic Moment, the Turning Point of her life, the Major Point of Characterization, and lots of other nifty, writerly words which basically mean that this is the lowest of lows to which she could possibly fall, and from here on out it's all character development as she claws her way out of the hole in which I threw her.  I broke her heart, threw it on the floor, and trampled it for good measure, and I'm going to cut it into little bits tomorrow, and then she gets to put the pieces back together, and that's the story.  And it only took me 55,000 words to get there.  Not that she wasn't changing before this, but this is The Big One.  So it's really exciting that I have it written, and I get to do more tomorrow now that I know I can.  This one is going to be even harder, in some ways, because I have to crush Christopher, too, and break his heart and send him into a spiraling depression, so that he will eventually agree to the wedding and his uncle can come and all sorts of bad things can keep happening.

Actually, I'm not sure whether this story has another 45k words in it, but there are a couple of scenes I need to go back and add, anyway, and I can word pad.  If I have to, I'll just write a really long and detailed epilogue.  I can edit it down in December.

And, for now, I'm going to try to wind down and go to sleep.  Maybe some Pac Man will do the trick...

-Jaya-