The Book of Masks Homepage

A Commentary Track on Recent Chapters

A commentary track on today's entry.

Two weeks ago, in "Improvising in a Complicated World" , I wrote:

Today—Tuesday afternoon, as I compose this—I am supposed to start writing the storyline that you guys voted for over the weekend, one involving Will, the YouTube crew, and Andrea Varnsworth. I spent some time thinking about it yesterday, and I got an idea I liked. Something in line with what you'd expect from the anticipated storyline, but with a bit of a twist. It got me excited.

But when I started gaming out some of the more distant consequences—not outlining, just playing "what if ... and then what if ... and then what if"—I remembered two other certain characters who are in play. And those two characters wouldn't exactly derail what I had planned, but they would complicate it.

Put it this way: Given characters A and B, then X is bound to happen. It is inevitable, and it will happen almost immediately. And X would badly interfere with Z, the plan I have for Will. It would probably forestall it entirely, and even if it didn't forestall it, any story that juggles X and Z would be ungainly. A challenge to handle, at least.

So this is where I am as I slump thoughtfully over my laptop: What the hell am I going to do about X, when it is Z and its complications that I'm so interested in?

I can now say that characters A and B are Andrea/Will and Chelsea/Josiah; that Z was Will's plan to sleep with himself in a way that he could get caught and thereby become notorious (in a good way) with Andrea's friends; and that X was Josiah wanting to get together with Will to rekindle the spark between Andrea and Chelsea. I wasn't uninterested in the latter, but I was more interested in the former. I was also more interested in setting up a conflict between Andrea/Will and Charles—he's not going to play Will's game—and all of that would have been a momentum-killing interference if I'd tried juggling it alongside Josiah.

So, yes, today's chapter is meant to derail Josiah's plans and set up a branch that would concentrate on Will's plans. But the alternative, where Will goes off to meet Josiah, is still available, and the proper course of action there is for Josiah's plans to derail Will's interest in promoting himself with Andrea's group.

*

Meanwhile, there are some interesting comments in the post below, regarding Andrea as a POV character, the merits of Will's plan, and whether the interactions between them work. I'd be interested in seeing these opinions expanded in light of today's chapter, particularly Charles's appearance at the end of it. For the record, that chapter was composed before I saw the comments, and it was in no way influenced by them.

I can't say that I intended for readers to react as (at least two) readers reacted. I didn't intend for Will's plan to be a bad plan, and I certainly didn't consciously try to portray it as ill-conceived. But I did intend for it to fail, and for it to fail by leaving Charles baffled and even a little angry with Andrea. (Well, this much I intended: rugal felt that Will's plan was motivated by "a bit of a complex over the fact that the 'new and improved Will' isn't even a blip on the radar of people like Andrea and her friends." That much I intended absolutely; it was the motive for him to make that play.) So I intended Will's plan to go wrong. Did my imagination therefore prepare for that failure by supplying a chapter sequence that was unhappy and "inorganic," all the better to show that the plan was a misreading of Andrea's social group? I don't know. I can only say the reaction actually kind of pleased me. Whether it made for a satisfying read, of course, is another question.

But I don't think it explains why the chapters were so hard to write.

*

Finally, I used variations on some ideas proposed in this week's QotW. Today's chapter doesn't set any of those up as choices, but it does set up the chance that those choices will become available later.