If you look around and check this place out, you can tell that this story is in the works. Has been for some time. I have a starter chapter and even the original short story from which this tale was conceived. But that’s it. When I start to get started, I start to get stuck.
My narrator is both this story’s largest asset and heaviest burden when it comes to planning. Derek Fincher is my acclaimed graphic novelist who is afflicted with a gruesome memory disorder brought about by his being addicted to the bottle for the better half of a lifetime. His condition provides a narrative device that grants me full control of both time and space. Derek moves involuntarily and uncontrollably through time because his lack of memory allows him no concept of it. He takes Billy Pilgrimages. But this literary freedom comes with its own set of drawbacks (draw of setbacks?).
Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
With a narrator that breathes anarchy into a storyline and lays waste to chronological order, how does one piece the story together? All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, amiright?
Anyway, I’ve been trying everything. Timelines, process maps, colored index cards, the works. I essentially have 3 storylines to thread together and the challenge is to layer them so that they seamlessly tell the best story possible with all of the appropriate arcs and climaxes while not running away from the reader. Up until now it’s felt like telling a joke and part way through realizing that I failed to mention some crucial details in the beginning that need to be there to get to the punchline. The priest wasn’t walking through the desert, he was actually riding a camel. The doctor he was with, yeah, it was actually a nun. The chicken? Well I forgot to tell you that the chicken was diagnosed with agyrophobia*.
That being said, I’ve finally managed to put together a comprehensive scene list with a scattered, yet reasonably coherent order. I call it my “script.” Has headers and everything. And I put it on PowerPoint so I can present it at your next office meeting. I’ll bring my own laser pointer. And then I’ll drive your cat crazy.
* Agyrophobia is the fear of streets or crossing the street. Get it? Get it!?
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