This is long. I just thought that I would let you know.

This is supposed to be an exercise in working out, articulating, what I want from my novel. But I suppose that everything that I think I want is already in me. I don’t expect anything new to be given to me by my characters, although I won’t rule it out. They’ve taught me plenty in the past. But my major point is that I want my story to be tangible, although it’s a kind of alternate universe, and I want it to feel alive and like the world breathes, as that’s what stands out to me when I read a novel. I’ve read plenty of books (The Awakening, The Invisible Man, and even The Blind Assassin) which have a dead setting, with which the characters don’t interact. Granted, the character’s environment is only a menial detail, although it often has a profound effect on their development. I guess I’m being harsh when I say they have ‘dead settings’. It just doesn’t feel vast, it doesn’t feel like the cities could swallow me whole, or even, dare I say it, that I could write a fan-fiction about them.

A Handmaid’s Tale is a novel in which I lost myself, in which the world was big enough to make me feel Offred’s insignificance, as though she and I, together, were trapped in that bare little room with the Latin scribbled in the bureau (apologies if I didn't remember that detail correctly. It's been a while). I want that to happen in my story. The world, the society, the people are important; my main character, Hephaestion, is a product of his environment, of his parents and upbringing, of the people who lord over his life. Not the happiest of themes, I assure you, and not the easiest one to write, either. I have never, in all of my life, been able to fashion a world in which I felt stunned. I’ve experienced world-building like that a few times in Fantasy novels and in video games, and the one time with Margaret Atwood, but I could not build one myself. Am I trying too hard?

This is where my issue of researching comes in, but I don’t really want to talk about that, as it’s distracting and I know that I should just STOP looking things up and let Phae tell his story. I should let myself tell the story, although Phae and I are completely different and I’m trying to keep it that way.

Although I know that he has parts of me in him: his fears are mine, his anger and thought-processes are mine, as what else do I know? I’ll probably try to change it around, think outside of my box and try to construct a new box for him. I want him to be naïve, charming, coquettish, passive. He needs to not realize how submissive he is; he needs to think that he’s in control, that all of his study and observation about men and the society in which he lives are just his attempts to understand and be subversive. He may or may not realize, at the end, that everything was for naught. It will depend on how depressed I will feel by the end, and whether or not I decided to solidify the plot that I have been mulling over for some time.

Can I say that I’m trying to make Alex the real hero? Is he not the real hero? Will he be tragic? I can’t stop him from being tragic, if he wants it, and I can tell he does. (How odd to say that I know these things about figments of my imagination. It sounds overly indulgent of myself, overly artistic, but I can’t help it. If I don’t live my characters’ lives, how will the reader?) I’m trying to pull an Oscar Wilde, in the sense that I probably AM Phae but desire to BE Alex, although I don’t want either, neither is perfect-- they both will end sadly, I think. The point is not that the boys aren’t strong enough to make their own destinies, but that the world will crush them without mercy, regardless of how hard they try. (Greek mythology-influence, much? Well, I guess it makes sense.) Where does that leave me, plot-wise? Your guess is as good as mine.

I want to put Phae, specifically, because he’s the narrator, through all of the subconscious fears which women (me) go through today: fear that he isn’t good enough, the fear that he will never be able to offset his identity which is coupled with physical attractiveness with intelligence and knowing random facts, the fear that all of his work and struggle will have been for nothing, that he will end up like his father who was “whipped”, in the terms of a few of my friends, and the fear that love is something out of his reach, that he isn’t worth it or that he’ll have to settle for something. Will I give him the opportunity to feel as though he has triumphed over these fears? Will I let him get married only to become a subservient house-husband to his ladder-climbing girlfriend/wife? Will I let him consciously recognize that his love for Alex, and in turn Alex’s love for him, is something more tangible and less transient that any feelings he’s ever had for women?

The depth of their friendship is something that I’m going to try and explore, although I think that Phae will probably get in my way, which is alright. Perhaps a reader will be able to get at what I mean. I’ll try not to bury it, as much as Phae, in all of his glorious, aforementioned denial, will allow me. I think that my having to write about the feelings that I’ve experienced with regards to a friendship which borders on being unhealthy should come pretty easily, and that Phae will take to that. Alex will probably take to the outcomes of a friendship like that. I know what I’m saying doesn’t really make sense, but that’s okay. Maybe after I’m done writing the damn thing, people might get it.

A now, in a complete change of topics, I really want to include mythology and textbook excerpts, either from Phae’s own writing or his father’s or just the books that both men love and/or take a lot from. Would that add to the holistic feel of my world or would it make the story feel too contrived? Maybe I’ll write the narrative, then go back and add the blurbs to see how I feel about them, because at least then I’ll have something written.

But what will my plot be? Should I make the boys go through events, section by section, or should I try to make it fluid? I was actually toying with the idea of making the structure really disjointed, to add to Phae’s unreliable-ness and to contribute to the post-traumatic stress syndrome that he will exhibit from time to time. I wrote a small story about his thoughts which lead fluidly into a memory by thinking about something Alex had said. It made sense in my mind, it made sense when I re-read it, but to someone on the outside, I don’t know how coherent it was. Should the story be coherent? The boys are messed up. I want it to show. A broken narrative, moving from past to present and then back again might get at what I’m trying to say, but how hard would it be to read something like that? It would probably end up being like “Girl Interrupted” where certain sounds divert the action into scenes from the past. Or maybe I could do it like Margaret Laurence did in The Diviners with “memorybank movies” or “photos” which lead the main character into thinking about her past. I don’t know.

I’m tired of writing things and hoping that plot will magically manifest itself because it’s been virtually impossible for me to follow set outlines when I make them for myself. I keep hoping that if I just sit down and start, things will happen because I’m driven by character development. My novels are not like Fahrenheit 451. But when I tried to do that, in 2008, my “novel” was the biggest pile of shit that I’ve ever read. Nothing happened. And the stuff that did happen (my main character ran away from his life, joined a hippie commune in Canada, helped deliver a baby in the wilderness, and adopted said child and went back to the United States to work in a library) was really…”WTF” inducing. I don’t even know where it came from. But I was unhappy with the results. That 50,000 words was practically wasted and useless, except for the feeling of fulfillment that it gave me, as well as the knowledge that I am capable of writing something with one character for that length.

I’ll try to give myself some ideas of plot arcs and hope that it turns out for the best. I guess that’s all I can do. Take the wheel, Phae. Try not to crash us too hard.