Clustering and a new chapter

I'm still reading that Susan Bell book a little every day and am really getting a lot out of it -- unfortunately. I wish I had had it when I was working on the first rewrite. I guess right now it's not helping me to spot problems so much as to diagnose problems that I know are there and prefer to ignore.

One of the concepts I got out of the bit I read yesterday was of "clustering." This is in her long examination of the correspondence between Maxwell Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald during revisions of The Great Gatsby. An early draft had a section, near the end, where Gatsby starts unloading to Nick all of his life story, which solves characterization and motive and plot problems. But it's an inelegant solution because it's all clustered together, feels like an information dump and interrupts the momentum of the present action. Bell goes on to show the more elegant solutions that Fitzgerald developed in later drafts.

I recognized the phenomenon. I definitely had that problem with one character in particular, and in fact I wrote about trying to address at the start of the last revision. I did de-cluster it a little bit and spread the butter more evenly around the bread. But not completely and perfectly and there are still some lumpy bits.

I think I do a good job of avoiding the sense of an information dump that Bell warns against. However, there is still the problem of seeming to depart from the main story. How do I stay focused on the present action that interests my main character while getting in information about stuff that happens outside his presence?

The problem I'm concerned about is in the chapter that I "line edited" yesterday. I did that work, but I knew in my heart as I did so that there was a deeper structural flow. What's really interesting to me is how these flaws are built in and inherent from the original concept of the book and keep rearing their head like a game of whack-a-mole.

That problem kept me tossing last night. Reading Susan Bell helped me think it through some more and this a.m. instead of trying to "work" on it or "fix" it, I did some freewriting and note-taking to try and sort out some possible solutions. And the solution I'm leaning toward right now, unfortunately, is to write a new chapter. I plan to take the current Chapter 11, to take the little bit of present action that's in there and take the digression/backstory stuff and use those as seeds to develop an episode that involves more present action involving my main character and his development, which should help me sneak in the backstory.

I'm not going to rush into it. Other solutions may come to me. But that's the way I'm leaning. I'm not excited about that. I really wanted to feel like I was done with this kind of development work.

Line editing and other work

More work today like how I finished last week. I picked a chapter unlikely to be cut or to need much development work and just concentrated on line editing.

I had visions of wielding an expert hammer and chisel that let the masterpiece underneath the lumpy stone emerge, but I'm having trouble getting into the right mind set. I don't think I'm seeing the language critically enough. I feel like I'm coasting. It's too familiar maybe. So far, the changes aren't very aggressive. On the other hand, maybe I've done such a good job up to now that it doesn't need much of that kind of work. That's wishful thinking I suppose. It will probably just take time to train my brain to get in the right critical zone. When I do, I may have to circle back to these first chapters and work on them again.

So I got a complete 21-page chapter done today. (Chapter 6 in the current numbering.) However, it took more than just the regular a.m. session. I had to come back to it after that break to finish the line editing. Also I didn't just stick to line editing after all because I found another relatively small clarification/development problem that I needed to let sit over lunch and then come back to again. I have an uneasy feeling that the chapter as a whole doesn't have the tension it should, so maybe it will need more development work after all.

I'm finding more continuity problems. A piece of gear in the plot is stored in a hallway closet in this chapter but I know at another point I have it in a bedroom closet. Again, how did I never notice this before?

Made some more notes over the weekend on the second book. I'm thinking a lot lately about genre.