It Seemed Like a Good Idea

I have a problem with A Different World, and last night helped me solve it. But before we get to that, I have to backtrack a little.

Last night I attended the Woodinville Writer's Group (Woodinville Barnes & Noble, 7:30 to 9:00, second Tuesday of every month). Ted Sanders gave a presentation on starting (and plotting) a novel, and I read about half of Chapter 5 of A Different Worldto the assembled group. I brought along my notes/plot/plot outline for Firestar in case people wanted to discuss other ways of plotting and outlining a book. Ted, though, hit it right on the sweet spot.

After reading Chapter 5, and listening to the rather cogent points about what I had read, I considered a number of issues about the story:

• I do a lot of duplicating when I tell a story; I don't know why, but even in the jokes and stories I tell out loud I do this.
• I need to find a way to include vital material in each chapter, or in the run-up to each chapter. For example, in Chapter 4 we learn that a "person of interest" is a Level 3 Sex Offender, and Gina has to explain what that means, but without any preparation in Chapter 5.
• the 'voice' of the characters is too similar, and I need a way to distinguish between the Victorian 'voice' and the 'modern' voice.
• I need to seriously rethink the entire theme and presentation of the story.

The latter is the most important of all of the above points (I can usually catch the duplication in edit). The theme of DW is contained in the very first sentence: It might be a different world, Police Matron Virginia Stone thought as she surveyed the crime scene, but murder was still murder.

The key thing here is the phrase 'different world'. The theme is that we have a person having to adapt to a new world. She is continually tripped up, not by the new or different things, but by the things she thinks she knows from her own cultural heritage. As she adapts, as she learns, we get to explore the world with her.

In a sub-genre like this, alternate history with free access, we have several issues that have to be addressed. These are (in no particular order):

• cross-contamination; Gina is over the sickness of new germs, so it is cultural cross-contamination. In Counterfeit Line she makes one change, she inadvertently introduces the brassiere (after trying on a corset). This is deliberate, and gives her a vocation that it was acceptable for a woman to have (clothes and stitching).
• cultural attitudes. This one is trickier. I have to create and showcase a Victorian world, but not quite a straight Victorian world. I have to introduce differences, plausible ones, and slip them in, and make it obvious that these are differences. For example, a lot of the anti-prostitution drive in the Victorian era was from 'cleanliness'. Prostitutes passed on STDs, and public health was seen as a wedge issue (the first of many) that could be used to make people more moral (this led, among other things, to Prohibition in the US, and the current Washington State ban on smoking in public places). People will be more moral and pure because we will ram our vision of those desired traits down their throats. For the purists, this led to the Bolshevik strain of socialism, too. In Counterfeit Line I didn't have to do that as much as Gina was not choosing to live in New Essex.
• the history of New Essex and the Dominion of America. I did this with an appendix in Counterfeit Line, but in DW I'll have to slip it in. And when I get to Body of Evidence I'll have to be even more careful. Fortunately I have a character who is a historian who can drop things in to the story, Elissa.
• resolve the murders at the beginning of the book, and resolve the issues raised in Chapter 4 (jurisdiction).

So what does this mean? Well, in one of the early chapters Gina and Elissa open the portal and look at a town in Bavaria in 1704 that is being besieged by the Anglo-Dutch army under John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. But what does that have to do with the theme? Nothing. Out it goes. I love that chapter. I'll save it for something else. Think of it as tough love. Leaving with it is Elissa's idea of seeing the other sites. I'll have to stick something in about that, but it will be background.

So what replaces that? Elissa wants to move in with Gina. Her ostensible reason is to look for things to buy that she can sell in our timeline as 'Victorian Replicas' (no fooling, there is quite a market for that). That gives me an excuse to work in some historical bits, have Gina teach Elissa some of the finer points of Victorian behavior, thus bringing them to the reader's attention, and a couple of other things (there was an article in the 1900 L.A. Times about how a woman should board a street trolley!).

Now I need to thoroughly revisit the plot. I know who the murderer is, and I know how he is doing it, I just have to work that into the story. And Gina will be the one who solves it because she is the only one who can put all of the pieces together. Hmm, time to haul out the outline.

But this is an example of how theme permeates everything, and by staying true to a theme a problem (recognized by my subconscious) can be solved.